


Mideel or Bust

by DeathByDatura



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII (Video Game 1997)
Genre: Cid Vincent and Shera are a threesome in this one beware, Clarret, Elena is an undomesticated lesbian, Lemons, Mentions of Clerith, Mentions of Tsru, Past Cloti, Reno - Freeform, Reti, Rude is the only one sensible, You can judge me but I won't care, tifa - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-29
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 17:47:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,777
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26182921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeathByDatura/pseuds/DeathByDatura
Summary: Starting a new life was easy enough, considering. What to do with it wasn't so.
Relationships: Tifa Lockhart/Reno
Comments: 9
Kudos: 34





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this months ago and dropped it, so it's probably in need of major editing that I'm too lazy to do.

She hadn’t been to Mideel ever since she almost died there. It didn’t bring up any pleasant memories, but then again few places did. Traveling the world in hot pursuit of the greatest evil ever spawned by an evil corporation does that to a person. Very few places remain untainted by the blood and death and despair of those days, at least to her. After all was said and done, however, after Sephiroth and Jenova, after Kadaj and Loz and Yazoo, after Deepground, after her attempts at normalcy for seven years after that, it was time to move on. She had no other choice.

There’s nothing left for Tifa in Edge. Marlene started to display a genuine interest for engineering sciences two years ago, and ever since she lives in Rocket Town with Cid, Shera, and their four-year-old daughter Petra, under their tutelage. Around the same time Denzel was finally admitted into the WRO’s ranks, despite Reeve’s initial refusal six years ago, so upon turning fourteen Cloud took his protege to Junon, where the WRO’s military has its main base. Cloud made that day their definitive breakup, and so Tifa found herself alone.

She still has her friends’ affection, of course. She still visits them frequently, they still phone her regularly, and Denzel, she’s practically his mother, so even though he left for Junon they still talk and visit each other constantly. The day she found herself alone for the first time, however, when she first heard the emptiness in her heart echoing against the walls of the deserted Seventh Heaven, she broke into a million pieces.

Mideel, or New Mideel as it’s technically called, is barely recognizable now. Rebuilt a ways from the giant Mako pool where its predecessor stood, the tropical coastal town stands small, yet proud and lively. The hot springs resort and the Mako hole, which can be seen glowing dully from there at night, have made of the town a popular vacation spot for anybody seeking a relaxing escapade and an interesting touristic destination for those in search for instructive and historical outings, but it still retains its serenity and connection to nature.

Tifa decided to make it her new home only a year ago. After traveling the world again for the previous two years without the urgency of its impending doom and finding her own peace of mind on the road, she decided that she wanted a sunny place with plenty of fresh air as her home. She ruled out Costa del Sol almost immediately upon her following arrival. Too touristy, noisy, popular. Costa del Sol is for parties. For a sociability she had no capacity or patience for anymore. She’s gone through too much to tolerate the attention from party-goers and sun-bathers who want nothing but shallow entertainment for the time being.

Enter New Mideel. Retired as she is from the WRO’s military forces, Tifa has little to worry about as her pension secures her a decent living, although she doesn’t discard occupying her time with a fulfilling activity, when she figures which that could be. Another bar feels like a mistake, a repeat of a life that already wore her down. But she isn’t in a hurry, and meanwhile she enjoys going into town and getting well acquainted with the locals.

There’s only one nightclub in town, despite the several bars, and that’s the one in the resort itself. New Mideel’s hot springs resort hotel is a little ways from the town itself so as to not disturb the locals so much, despite the tourists incursions into the town, but when they want to have a night out they head straight for the resort. Tifa has taken to do this, too, whenever she feels like dancing or getting laid. She doesn’t want to engage in anything serious at the moment, neither to become the gossip of a small town by having a fling with a neighbor, so the resort is an ideal place to chat up strangers that will leave in a matter of days anyway without even having to take them to her own place. This is, in fact, a common sport amongst the resident youth.

Tonight she doesn’t feel like getting laid, but she could do with a drink, so Tifa dolls up a little and heads for her favorite gig to meet with her new friends.

She has become fairly popular in town. Tifa knows just how attractive she is, and thus knows that part of that popularity stems from the attention her body attracts, but she’s also happy that her personality is gaining her real friendships as well.

Almost as soon as she enters Sunny Side Up people start greeting her here and there, invite her to sit with them at their booths or join them for drinks at the bar. Tifa merrily obliges, chatting with one or the other and enjoying the placid company the islanders offer. Since she has been here for some time, the locals know her somewhat, even if not in particular depth. They don’t know who she is or where she comes from or what she’s done. They don’t know she survived the Nibelheim Incident or was part of Avalanche or fought Sephiroth. The nurse who tended to Cloud after his Mako poisoning happened to survive Ultimate Weapon’s attack on the former town and recognized her, but all she did was greet her amiably. Her new friends know her better, but still Tifa has never mentioned those details about her life. They know, however, that she isn’t looking for a relationship, so she gets to dance without funny implications, and even though some guys still try a pick-up line every now and then, she’s gracious in her rejections and it’s all left in good fun.

They wish Tidus and Yuna goodnight when they leave a couple of hours later. Lifestyle in New Mideel is social, but in a radically different way from Costa del Sol: New Mideel is a community and its life occurs in public, in bars and such gathering places, and one is sure to meet one friend or another there even without prior arrangement of a date. Tifa stays enjoying a drink with Vanille, Fang, and Laguna, three of her closest new friends, at the bar, and they make fun of Tifa’s prowlers in good nature. A couple of tourists that have stumbled upon the bar have been eying her all night, but Tifa stirs her pale pink cocktail with the stick giggling before taking the olive to her mouth. She really likes olives. She loves her new friends. She loves New Mideel. Her mind and her heart and her soul are at peace for once in her life, finally.

‘You win!’

Tifa glances up to find fifteen-year-old Priscilla Bloom. She, too, wanted somewhere sunny to live after the disaster at Junon when she was old enough, and found her way to New Mideel. Now she works as a bar back here while she figures out what she wants to do with her life, and, due to their previous acquaintance, she and Tifa grew close soon.

‘Oh?’ Tifa says, smiling. ‘What did I win?’

‘A free drink,’ says Raine, Sunny Side Up’s owner and Laguna’s wife, as she sits a tumbler down before Tifa. The barmaid arches a suggestive eyebrow with a half smile on her face, nodding toward the side of the bar. ‘Compliments of the fella over there.’

‘Here comes another one,’ Vanille giggles.

‘You’d been undisturbed for too long tonight, Tifa,’ laughs Laguna. ‘It’s been twenty minutes since the last one.’

‘Ooh,’ Fang coos appreciatively, following Raine’s gesture with her eyes. ‘Hot. This one looks like danger, girl.’

Tifa shares an accomplice smile with the girls before she scans the bar in search of the aforementioned fella. Tifa’s eye is caught almost at once by flaming red hair, but her heart skips a beat and her belly jumps a wild flip upon meeting sharp blue eyes, two sharp markings high on his cheekbones framing them.

Smirking, Reno rises his glass to her, but Tifa is frozen, wide eyes on the Turk. It’s not like their former enmity stands, they are in fact in amiable terms with the Turks and Rufus Shinra since the whole Kadaj thing and Rufus’s clearing of his slate, but New Mideel is still her safe ground, her sanctuary, and she doesn’t know how she feels about a Turk stomping on it with his bloodstained boots.

‘There you go,’ says Raine. ‘He said to get you another round of whatever you were having.’

‘Tifa?’ asks Fang, arching an eyebrow.

Tifa restarts her breathing and glances down before her. A new, full tumbler sits now next to her mostly empty one. Tifa swallows, nervous for some reason, and glances back at Reno. Despite his eye-catching hair color, she hadn’t seen him. The absence of his suit makes him quite inconspicuous, despite his perennially eye-catching spiky red hair. Instead of the black suit, he wears black pants which end into his dirty boots, and a dark blue shirt in the same coolly unkempt fashion that she remembers, half tucked into his pants, collar wide open.

He winks at her and takes his glass to his mouth, his attention unwavering on her, and her whole body goes into a flutter despite herself. She looks back ahead, taking the new drink to her lips as a coy smile escapes her.

What the hell?

Tifa sits contemplative of her own reaction while Fang, Vanille, and Laguna resume the conversation. Even now she can feel Reno’s eyes drilling her. She isn’t unused to men ogling her, it’s just another Tuesday, and yet his eyes make her skin stand on end. Perhaps it’s the whole being single. Not that she hasn’t been single for already three years, but nobody who actually knows her and that she knows has ever tried coming onto her. Not that Reno is trying to come onto her. He’s just generally flirty and stupidly attractive as per Turk curriculum.

She’s had one too many drinks, that’s what.

Tifa rolls her eyes. Of course it’s that. She’s not even making any sense.

‘Ooh,’ Raine coos then. ‘Here he comes, guys.’

The barmaid makes herself conspicuously busy and Tifa catches from the side of her eye how Reno stands from his stool.

‘It’s getting late, guys,’ says Fang, ever the mischief master.

‘Wait, no,’ Tifa calls, alarmed.

‘Gotta work tomorrow morning.’

‘It’s still early,’ asks Laguna, wrinkling his nose.

‘Honey, Fang’s right. You’ve got morning shift this week,’ chuckles Raine.

Before Tifa can say another word Fang has grabbed both and kidnapped them, leaving Tifa to her luck. She waits, wondering what exactly are Reno’s intentions, but feigning indifference, eyes fixed on her tumbler, even as he takes seat on one of the stools that her friends have vacated next to her.

‘Pretty lady like you should never be without the proper company, yo.’

She half smiles at the sound of his familiar drawl, but still won’t look at him.

‘And what do you understand by the proper company?’

From the corner of her eye she catches his eyes roaming over her body.

‘Wouldn’t know, yo.’

Tifa can’t help but laugh. She finally turns to face him.

‘Why would you suggest that, then?’

‘Can you blame any of the guys who’ve come here practically beggin’ you to sit on their faces?’

Her eyes widen and heat spreads through her body. Tifa knows she must look tomato red as she takes a hand to her mouth in embarrassment.

‘Reno!’

Reno only smirks, eyes still hawk-like on her, and now, now she becomes hyper aware of his words and his moves: he’s looking at her like a predator looks at prey. She sits up straight, recovering her composure. Just another Tuesday.

‘What brings you to New Mideel?’ she asks.

‘I earned my vacation this year, yo,’ Reno says easily. ‘Being HOLI is hard.’

A few years ago the Turks ceased to be Turks, as much as a Turk ceases to be anyway. With Rufus clearing his act and not needing a little swarm of spies and assassins under his command, he made one single request to Reeve despite having been funding the WRO since before the Deepground business: that he gave employment to the Turks. A desk job or a military position with the Peacekeeping Corps, he didn’t care, apparently he only wanted them to be looked after after all they had done for him. Tifa to this day takes Rufus’s words with a grain of salt, but Yuffie, still Director of Intelligence of the WRO, has a task force specifically dedicated to watching Rufus and everything surrounding him twenty-four-seven, so she sleeps a little easier.

Thus, after much debate and consideration, Reeve and the commander of the WRO’s elite military forces agreed that they could be good assets. Reeve had called this force Higher Operations Legacy Institute, or HOLI, upon its formation, corny as only Reeve can be, and it includes only the best of the best. This means that Tifa’s friends are all part of it by virtue of the dangers they have faced in the past, and the Turks, by virtue of their own experiences, made a good fit in such elite forces.

‘Can’t be that different from being a Turk,’ Tifa says. ‘Or is it just that you don’t like that it’s Vincent giving the orders?’

‘Good ol’ Vinny’s a pain in my ass, alright.’

Vincent himself cleared his act, too, complete with a makeover that brought him forth to the present and made ladies everywhere swoon, and now, irony of ironies, is the Commanding Officer of HOLI, and thus the Turks’ boss.

‘I think he does a great job,’ Tifa says, chuckling.

‘Didn’t say he don’t, just that he could do with removin’ that stick from his ass.’

Tifa rolls her eyes, but she smiles in amusement.

‘So, you’ve been an elusive one for a while, Lockhart,’ he says. ‘Where you been? I heard you’ve been around.’

‘I have,’ she shrugs. ‘But I’m curious,’ she says, simply to divert the attention from herself; Reno wasn’t just an assassin and spy for Shinra, but also an excellent profiler, and she does not want him prodding his fingers into her life. ‘Vacation in New Mideel? I’d have pegged you as the Costa del Sol kind. You know, babes and beaches.’

‘Got a babe right here and there’s a beach just outside.’

‘You know what I mean, Reno,’ she giggles.

‘I did initially vote for Costa del Sol, I admit, but Rude’s fond of hot springs, he dragged us all here.’

‘Oh?’ she says, glancing around. ‘Where are they?’

‘I expect Elena’s chasing after bikini-clad ladies and Tseng’s trying to not suffer an aneurysm back in the hotel. Rude should be pudding there, too. Said he was too relaxed to come for a drink, left me all by my lonesome. But, alas, not regretting that right now. Say, I heard you and spiky split up.’

A bucketful of cold water would have had the same effect. Wire-tight tense, Tifa looks ahead again, down at her drink, and stirs it. It still hurts. She doesn’t love Cloud anymore, doesn’t regret loving him either, but that doesn’t mean the heartbreak of his constant departures and hesitant affection and secondhand love simply eased overnight. It remains a dull ache in her chest whenever she thinks about it. But she came to New Mideel to move on, and so she did.

‘You know, for a minute there I thought you were coming onto me,’ she says, going for carefree.

‘Oh, I am,’ he says. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I mean to get into your panties, but I want the elephant in the room out of it for that. In other circumstances I wouldn’t mind a voyeur, but with you, I want you all to myself, yo.’

A traitorous flutter courses through her body. She will not let herself be seduced by Reno of the Turks, let alone turned on, so she keeps her eyes on her drink.

‘Brazen.’

‘Straightforward. Who the hell knows when Imma catch you single again? Woman like you, this is a limited time opportunity, and I ain’t gon’ pull my punches. That’s Rude’s move.’

This is different, Tifa at once realizes. Men’s eyes stray all over her figure, more often than not falling on her chest, but Reno’s attention is absolute on her. His eyes don’t dart to her anatomy anymore. He’s studying her, examining her reactions, checking his cards, wondering which hers are, playing his hand. She doesn’t think she has ever been the recipient of such hawk-like attention zeroed in on her and it makes her skin stand on end.

‘You’re not going a great way about it,’ Tifa finally scoffs, hoping to pass for casual and uninterested.

‘Clearly things didn’t end well between the two of you, so I see nothing wrong with commiserating with a good ol’ frenemy.’

‘And you think you’d have something to win from that.’

‘Nah,’ Reno says, shaking his head. ‘If that got me a step closer to sucking your pussy, I wouldn’t complain, but I mean it, the commiserating thing. I’m listening, Lockhart.’

She reddens again at his words, but chooses to ignore them.

‘I’m not about to spill my heart out to you, Turk,’ she says, chuckling.

‘Why not?’ he says, although he chuckles, too, amused.

‘Because that would be giving you ammo.’

‘Hey, we’re on the same side now, and I’m a great shot. You ain’t gon’ be victim to friendly fire, I promise.’

She smiles in amusement and turns to look at him.

‘I bet I’m not. There’s nothing to tell either way. It wasn’t that we didn’t end well, we simply ended,’ Tifa says, shrugging.

‘I very much doubt that, yo. Not with your history. Too much water under the bridge for this to be a cookie-cutter split-up,’ Reno says with a smug eyebrow arched.

‘And what do you expect me to tell you, then? You want me to get all emotional on you? Shed a few tears on your shoulder?’

‘I’m telling you, I want the elephant out.’

‘Why?’ she insists.

‘So I can get in.’

Stunned, Tifa meets eyes with the Turk, his attention undivided and unwavering on her. She pokes and prods at his words, but doubts wanting to figure out the real meaning to them. Although it isn’t much of a question, upon second thought. This is Reno: what he means is that he wants to fuck her.

‘There’s a free booth over there,’ Tifa finds herself saying. She doesn’t know exactly what she wants, but she can try to profile him, too, just like he’s doing with her. ‘Do you think you’ll be able to take a sob story?’

He smirks widely and makes an inviting gesture with his hand.

Tifa doesn’t bother bringing up Cloud and their separation once sitting. Instead she starts interrogating him herself, leaving Reno as little room as possible for him to ask questions and deviating every time he asks one she doesn’t want to answer. This doesn’t remotely faze Reno, however. He sits relaxed with an arm behind her on the backrest of the booth, body turned towards her, leg crossed over his knee, his interest as intently fixed as at the bar. He answers most of her questions easily. He doesn’t touch her though. Tifa’s image of the wild card that is Reno is a little more aggressive in his sexual pursuits. Not forceful, she doesn’t think he would do that, not when he’s got a cunning mind and devilish good looks and smooth pick-up lines, but physical. She believed him to be the kind to not-so-subtly brush her arm or lay a hand on her knee. She has seen him in action back in Seventh Heaven, after all. Once the parties reached a truce it was a common sight to find the Turks at her bar and so Tifa has witnessed Reno charming the panties off of many men and women with those kinds of soft contacts and seductive murmurs. He does none of this though. The closer he gets is to tangle his finger in her floaty, loose, split skirt where it lays on the bench between them, pull just slightly from it, discover one more inch of her thigh, and even this he does absently, eyes barely darting for a fraction of a second to the discovered skin before meeting her eyes again and staying there.

They have that drink, and then another, and by the third they are both laughing at reminiscences of the past. Tifa hasn’t failed to notice that he has moved closer, but they are genuinely having a good time. He’s still not touching her though, and it’s driving her a little insane.

‘I’m glad we’re batting for the same team now, yo,’ Reno says.

‘It’s not terrible to be on the good guys’ side, is it?’ Tifa says, chuckling.

‘Good’s relative. Good’s in the eye of the beholder. But I ain’t complaining ‘bout the WRO. But tell me, why’d you leave though? I’d have figured you’d stay with your little freedom fighting friends. You were running your own department and all.’

Tifa shrugs, but meditates her answer, stirring her drink, before answering.

‘I just want peace,’ she finally confesses. ‘I’m sick of fighting. If things go down the drain again, I will fight with them, in a heartbeat, but everything that happened since Nibelheim ripped so much away from me that I couldn’t take it anymore. I needed to make a life for myself on different foundations, ones of peace and happiness, not blood and death.’

Reno nods, and it surprises her that he’s actually, genuinely listening, paying attention without spouting snark and sex out of his mouth.

‘Enter Mideel,’ he says.

‘Enter Mideel,’ she repeats, chuckling.

‘Shame I don’t get to see your little skirts ‘round HOLI’s offices anymore though.’

Tifa giggles. Of course he had to go there.

‘It suits you though, all things considered. The seaside, it looks good on ya, Teef. You look good. Better than while you were with Cloud.’

Tifa meets his eyes. Reno persists in learning what happened between her and Cloud, whichever his reasons, but Tifa still refuses to give him ammunition, not to mention that this conversation has already become sincere enough on its own.

‘His loss,’ she says playfully, shrugging.

‘My gain,’ Reno smirks.

The hand on her skirt comes up and Reno tangles his fingers on a lock of her hair, brushing it while he follows the movement with his eyes. He still doesn’t touch her, but heat still pools low in her belly. Tifa may be playing ignorant, but the scene speaks for itself, really: they sit so close he’s breathing down her neck, so close she’s almost sitting on his lap, so close she can almost feel the heat of his hand on her shoulder as he brushes her hair.

A realization knocks at her in her mind, something asking to be acknowledged, but she doesn’t know what it is. All she knows is that, in awe, she realizes that Reno really isn’t pulling his punches. He just wants to fuck her, Tifa knows, but he’s not playing this game like the ones he used to play at Seventh Heaven and nerves overcome her at her ignorance on his reasons for that.

‘You really are coming onto me,’ she says.

Reno discreetly shifts towards her a little more. This time Tifa can feel his body heat ghosting over her skin. Their noses almost touch and she sees, up this close, all the shades of blue in his eyes as they dart down to her lips before looking up at her again.

‘I thought I’d made that clear before, yo.’

‘Why not before?’

‘You were with spiky,’ Reno says, shrugging, back to examining the locks of hair he’s tangling his fingers through. ‘I might be an asshole, but I’m not a total douche.’

‘Who are you trying to fool?’ she says, chuckling. ‘I’ve seen you play the game at the bar. I know you don’t care much for the boyfriends of the women you pursue.’

‘‘Cause they don’t care much themselves, yo. Women who look at their men like you looked at him are always unavailable, so I don’t bother.’

‘And now?’

The grin that spreads across his face is wicked and devilish and promising, and Tifa hopes he doesn’t notice her shudder. She swallows the heat back down.

‘Now I’m gon’ make you forget all about him.’

In a split second he leans in, but she straightens up and looks aside. Tifa’s whole body screams, desperate to make contact, but she forces herself to ignore the sensations that attempt and almost succeed at overriding her senses and stands up.

‘It’s very late,’ she says in a shaky breath. ‘And this is a horrible idea.’

Reno doesn’t look disappointed or upset, nor surprised. He bites his lips, but smirks up at her.

‘Let me walk you home,’ he says, this time lacking the seductive tone. ‘Not safe for a little lady like you to be out alone this late.’

‘I’ll be fine, and you know it.’

Tifa winks at him and, as she turns around, sees his delighted smirk.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Explicit lemons here, fellas.

Unexpected and shockingly, a fire lights up in her. Tifa turns and tosses all night in bed, after touching herself to relieve the burning sensation in the pit of her belly, and then turns and tosses all day as she goes through her routines, trying not to touch herself again. Regardless, she can’t figure out what has happened. Despite her familiarity with the process of getting aroused, never has it ever happened so fast and intensely. Men of all kinds and conditions have hit on her, handsome and charming and downright hot, some successfully, others not so much, but the actual process of arousing her is slow and not necessarily steady, and let’s not even talk about actually reaching carnal fulfillment.

She can’t understand how Reno has done this, and it scares her a little. She doesn’t know whether it was his wicked smile full of promise or his not quite touching her or his straightforwardness about his intentions, but something has awakened within her and it demands satisfaction. The problem with this comes with the fact that men rarely manage to fully sate her. Even the few times when she reaches orgasm something is usually missing, like it wasn’t enough, or what she really wanted at all. While it’s true that Tifa doesn’t ask for what she really wants, she believes that a good partner should be able to listen to what her body is asking for, or at least she listens to what her partners want. She likes the other party to lead the game, but they never really accomplish that despite their demands or dynamism. Tifa doesn’t know what happens, or why sex doesn’t ever truly satisfy her, but in any case her brand new, powerful arousal doesn’t help matters.

Regardless, she decides to act on it. Tifa dolls up that night and heads for the nightclub of the resort. Even though she knows the Turks reside there for the duration of their stay, Tifa deems the chances of meeting them slim. They could do just about anything other than going to the nightclub. Reno left for the town last night precisely to explore it, so it’s not far-fetched that they will head there and explore the nightlife. Even though there aren’t nightclubs in the village proper, there are good bars and many night owls that make of New Mideel a quaint place to enjoy evenings of fun. Tifa has found herself often deep into the night during a weekday having laughs with the locals, drinks in hand out of one bar or the other, or dancing on the streets.

But she needs a stranger tonight, so the only option is the nightclub.

The bouncers and the staff of the nightclub know her. Having been a barmaid for years, she understands the gig and what it entails, so the staff enjoys her visits since she’s a good patron with whom they can chat. This comes with some privileges too, and Tifa directly skips the line and the bouncers let her right in, greeting her warmly, and Tifa pays them back interesting herself about their lives.

Her first two drinks she spends at the bar, chatting with the bartenders and laughing at their jokes about the tourists, and afterwards, with a nice buzz going, she makes her way to the dance floor.

The eyes are on her as soon as she lands, and the company doesn’t make itself wait. Tifa has fun dancing around, letting one or the other spin her around while she examines the party-goers. Some are locals, but it’s Friday night, so the place is packed and she’s got quite a number of foreign options, but she studies her bedmates closely to avoid potential problems. She’s become adept at studying her suitors and figuring them out from the way they act around her, touch her, look at her, talk to her.

Some men get quite offended if a girl refuses to get close to them, and so it happens when, after witnessing the behavior of one of them with other girls in the club, Tifa rejects one of her prowlers with a gentle smile. He insists, trying to get a hold of her hips, but Tifa doesn’t budge and pushes him back with her hands, still trying to take the high road. She’s not surprised when he calls her a bitch. She’s surprised, however, when he looks past her shoulder and seems to tense up. He leans in to tell her she’s not worth it, to which Tifa rolls her eyes, and legs it.

A new hand sits on her waist.

‘Gotta be careful, gorgeous,’ drawls a familiar voice that makes her hair stand on end. ‘Not all men are as nice as those islanders downtown.’

‘And you?’ Tifa asks.

‘You know me. No point in lying, yo.’

She laughs. The hand on her waist slithers farther over her abdomen and presses her gently against the body behind her. But she doesn’t dare look. She’s already shivering in excitement, heat unfurling low in her belly.

‘Didn’t expect to see you here, yo.’

‘I felt like dancing,’ Tifa lies.

Reno chuckles, but she doesn’t hear it as much as she feels the vibration of his chest against her back, his breath against her ear.

‘Nah,’ he says. ‘Not with those clothes. Not with those moves. You didn’t come here to dance, did ya?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she says. ‘Where are the others?’

‘Somewhere around. You’re lookin’ mighty fine, Teef. Not that you ain’t a knockout every other day, mind ya.’

‘Thanks,’ she says, smiling bashfully.

‘Say, find anything you like?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Don’t play coy,’ Reno says, lips brushing her ear. ‘You didn’t come to dance. You came to hunt. So, find anyone you like?’

There it is, that fierce arousal uncoiling. He isn’t doing anything other men haven’t done, holding her and dancing close. He’s not even grinding for now, for crying out loud, and yet his breath on her neck and his hand around her waist and the rumble of his voice are already setting her on edge. She shudders.

‘No luck so far,’ she finally says.

‘Good.’

Then his mouth falls on her neck, sucks on her pulse point, and she can’t contain the shaky, surprised gasp that escapes her mouth as her whole body suffers a brief spasm.

‘Reno—’

‘Tifa,’ he answers. His other hand moves, rests on her hip and keeps her close to his. He’s taking a different approach, much more aggressive than any time she’s ever seen him, and she doesn’t know what to make of it, but she doesn’t want to move either. ‘If you want to fuck, just say it, yo.’

She tenses up. Despite that being her very reason to be here, Tifa feels better pretending she isn’t looking only for empty sex after which she will pull a walk of shame back home. That she has stopped looking for love doesn’t mean she doesn’t crave it.

‘Let me give you what you want, Tifa.’

His lips go back to her neck, this time with the light grazing of teeth, and Tifa shivers so hard he must notice, no doubt about it.

‘I don’t think this is a good idea, Reno,’ she gasps, although her traitorous hand lies atop of his around her waist—she’s just so hot. Too hot.

‘Why not?’ he says, regretfully ceasing the kissing on her neck and lifting his head to speak in her ear. ‘We’re both young, hot, single, no longer enemies... What’s so wrong about it?’

Tifa tries to find a reason, but finds none. Every part of her craves his touch. But why Reno though? How is he making her feel like this? How has he gotten her shaky and aroused and wet with just a few words and a hand around her waist?

‘I’ll do you better than spiky ever dreamed,’ he coos into her ear. ‘I’ll fucking burn down my hotel room for ya. Let me give you what you want, Tifa.’

She doesn’t even try to control herself when she presses back against his pelvis. She doesn’t want to control herself when she softly grinds against him. Encouraged by her gesture, both his hands move to hold her hips, keep them grinding. It’s a possessive gesture and she loves it.

‘Tease,’ he chuckles.

He spins her around then, and she’s chest to chest against him, his hands again woven around her waist, her own lying on his shoulders, so close she can feel his breath against her mouth before he claims her lips.

Her head spins. Reno sucks at her lips before coaxing them open with his tongue and Tifa just gives in. Damn everything, she needs this. He started this fire, anyway, he should be the one to put it out, if he can. It’s hot and wet and it makes the need inside her belly burn, and when he breaks apart Tifa can hardly breathe. She opens her eyes to find his looking at her lips, expression hungry, and he brings up a hand to trace her lower lip with his thumb.

‘I’ve been thinkin’ ‘bout this pretty pout of yours for… heh, far too long, yo.’

‘Is it everything you dreamed?’ she teases.

‘And more.’

‘Reno,’ she breathes. ‘If we’re going to do this, you better not make me regret it.’

He smiles that devilish grin of his and she’s done for.

He pulls apart and holds her hand, and Tifa lets him lead her out of the club. She finds that she really likes his hand: rough, large, warm, firm—holding hers firmly. She’s desperate for him to touch her though, and yet he does nothing but guide her down the hallway and across the resort and through the hotel’s lobby.

The moment they enter the elevator Tifa finds herself spun around and against the wall, and Reno falls upon her, lips on hers, arms around her, his whole body like a tower over her. Her fire builds and builds and she feels she’s going to burst at the seams if she doesn’t reach climax soon. With one of his hands he takes a handful of her ass, with the other he cradles the back of her neck to pull her head back and kiss her better, and Tifa kisses him back with a hunger she doesn’t remember ever experiencing before.

They move, but Tifa doesn’t understand why until they break apart for air. The elevator’s doors have opened and Reno takes her hand again to lead her outside. They grab onto each other down the hall, groping and kissing each other stupidly, until finally Reno halts their march before a door. He deftly extracts the key card from his pocket and opens the door, and they stumble inside, but he doesn’t give Tifa a chance to even think. It’s not like she wants it anyway.

Reno presses her again against the wall, but he grabs her behind the thighs and Tifa yelps and giggles when he lifts her up before he takes her lips again. She wraps her legs around his waist and feels his hardness against her center. She urges him to take off his clothes by starting unbuttoning his shirt, but Reno has other plans and, while he keeps her up against the wall with an arm, he drives his other hand down in between them. Tifa gasps when his fingers reach just the right spot and she feels him grin against her mouth.

She bounces against the mattress then, and she takes off her high-heeled, strapped shoes as he finishes removing his shirt and kicks off his boots. Reno is all lean, yet powerful muscle, the body of a swimmer, her mind provides, and Tifa realizes that his disheveled suits never made any justice to what lied underneath. He launches back at her, and Tifa grabs onto him, both desperate for contact. Reno pulls from her dress up until he strips her of it. Silence falls then, nothing but their panting breaths. Reno stares at her, mouth partly open and eyes slightly wide, chest rising and falling with his breathing. He stays like that for long enough that Tifa begins to feel self-conscious. She draws an arm over her chest, as if that would be enough to cover her near nakedness. But Reno takes her wrist and moves it back, eyes still roaming her body, as his smirk widens.

‘You are pure sin.’

He leans down and licks her body from her bellybutton to her chest, and Tifa’s every muscle reacts, clenching and spasming at the onslaught of attention. She leans on her arms to meet him halfway when he reaches for her mouth again and they are back at it. His hands are everywhere, in all the right places at just the right moments, assaulting her with sensations, and Tifa can only hold tight to him. When she removes her bra Reno attacks her breasts, but he doesn’t do it like most men, who are content to just squeeze and lick them senselessly. Not Reno. He massages them for her benefit, lightly pinches her nipples between his thumb and forefinger, grazes the taut nubs ever slightly with his teeth before sucking, heightening the sensation so much Tifa is left whimpering under his ministrations.

When he slides her panties down her legs Tifa feels self-conscious again, but Reno has no such qualms. He unbuckles his belt and pulls down both pants and boxers, leaning down then to retrieve a condom from his pants. Tifa gapes slightly at seeing him naked, a little larger than average, at least in her experience, but her attention is snatched by his opening the condom’s packet with his teeth and sliding it onto himself with unsurprising dexterity. They both freeze then, staring at each other, the realization of the line they are about to cross hitting them at the same time.

‘You wanna go on?’ he asks.

‘Not like we could turn back now,’ Tifa huffs.

‘We could. We’ve only seen each other naked. No biggie. We can still stop if you want.’

‘I don’t wanna stop.’

It comes out without thinking, voice firm even while she pants. Reno examines her expression, doubtful, but whatever he finds there makes him smirk widely again. He pushes her legs apart, kneels between them holding his shaft, and Tifa gasps shakily when he rubs just the tip against her labia.

‘You sure, gorgeous?’ he coos.

‘Yes,’ she sighs, hands bundling the bedsheets. ‘Do it.’

‘You want it? You want me to give it to ya?’

‘Give me all of it,’ she breathes. ‘Please, Reno.’

‘Fuck.’

Reno gets on top of her and kisses her furiously. Tifa throws her arms around his shoulders just to keep him close, and when he pushes himself inside of her, slow and steady, they both gasp. Pleasure washes over every corner of her being, overwhelms her so much her toes curl, and she can’t breathe, feels she’s going to explode. Reno leans his forehead against hers, panting harshly.

‘Reno—please—please, move,’ she whimpers.

‘So impatient, Teef,’ he chuckles, breathing ragged, as he pulls slowly back out, the drag of his cock against her swollen pussy maddening. ‘All good things to those who wait, ya know.’

Her reply dies in her throat when he rams into her, and pleasure strikes her so hard she thinks she’s going to burst at the seams already, fills her up in ways nobody has ever done before. Reno settles more comfortably above her and keeps thrusting into her, hard and steady and so good Tifa fears losing herself in this. Sweat already beads their bodies when Tifa feels her heat rising, close to the edge, and her whimpers grow a little louder.

‘You’re gon’ cum?’ Reno says, playful in his tone, but his eyes are intent on her, a predator observing his prey. ‘Yeah, you’re gon’ cum for me, aren’t ya, babe?’

Somehow that does it, topples her over the edge, makes her explode inside so hard she might be a goner. With a brief, breathy cry her whole body spasms: each and every muscle contracts and expands at the pleasure, her back arches, her legs clench so tight around him that she anchors him there, deep inside of her as he, too, comes with a loud curse into her neck. Her nails dig into his skin with his last stuttering thrusts, her whole body hyper sensitive to the slightest stimulation, and she keeps her legs wrapped around him, even though he doesn’t make to move aside, instead slumping on top of her and holding her close, both their breathings shaking and ragged onto the other’s shoulder.

They haven’t recovered their breathing when Reno leans on his elbows and holds her face. His eyes drink of her before he leans down and kisses her with as much passion as before. Her hands shake when she reaches out to hold his face as well. She wants more. She needs more.

Reno travels down her body. He kisses her chin, nibbles her neck. He treats her breasts and indulges himself, too, but Tifa this time doesn’t mind his indulging; he can do whatever he wants as long as he keeps making her feel so good. But he keeps traveling down, licking down her abdomen, until he looks up at her with a naughty smirk on his face. She shivers with anticipation. He pulls from her thighs, making her giggle, to place her on the edge of the bed and kneels on the floor.

‘Reno—’ she says, wide-eyed, but the words die in her mouth.

The contact of his tongue against her stimulated clit makes her gasp and her eyes roll back as another burst of fire overcomes her. Reno chuckles into her pussy, the vibration only heightening the pleasure, and he begins working her with his tongue and his fingers so masterfully she can’t even breathe. Tifa can only hold onto the bedsheets with a hand and to his hair with the other as his sucking and fingering bring her closer and closer to another orgasm.

She shakes so much after her next explosion that she doesn’t believe she will ever be able to move again, yet she leans on her elbows just watching him, mesmerized, lick his fingers soaked in her juices while he looks at her with a smirk.

‘Wanna taste yourself, kitten?’

Tifa shocks herself by nodding. Reno drives his fingers back inside of her, making her sigh, and leans above her again once he pulls them out. He brushes her lips with his sticky index and middle fingers without intruding, instead waiting until she darts her tongue out and takes them and sucks on them meeting his hungry eyes. Tifa can do nothing but back-burner just how obscene she’s acting, mostly because she wants nothing but to enjoy every second of this, but she’s shocked at herself, at how dirty she’s letting herself be, at how dirty she’s capable of being.

Reno withdraws his fingers and kisses her madly.

‘Tell me what you want, kitten,’ Reno says into her mouth. ‘Can’t take you high if I don’t know what’s in that pretty little head of yours.’

‘I—’

Tifa catches herself, wide-eyed at the words that almost left her mouth, but Reno nuzzles her nose.

‘Say it,’ he says. ‘Let me make all your dirty fantasies come true.’

She can’t think, and perhaps she should, but perhaps she should just feel for once and stop over-thinking and ruminating and just experience. Just unashamedly feel for fucking once.

‘I wanna taste you, too.’

Reno groans, more an animal sound than anything, and pulls up onto his knees. Tifa follows right after, hunger making her desperate, as he removes and ties up the condom and tosses it aside, but doesn’t at once take him in. Instead she holds his shaft and admires his length before she looks up at him and drags her tongue all across the underside of his cock.

‘Fuck,’ he grunts. He reaches out and with one hand he rubs the back of her neck while with the other he brushes her hair off her face. Reno watches her, heavy-lidded, as she plays him with her tongue, presses kisses onto his tip. Tifa has always felt self-conscious doing this, and still does, but damn, the way he’s looking at her makes her feel she’s doing it right, and when she finally takes him in as deep as she can without gagging Reno groans, eyes rolling back, and Tifa’s pussy palpitates in response.

Hearing him moan and growl, however, this thing he has awakened inside of her takes an even tighter grip on her. Tifa lets him go with a popping sound, leans up, and holds her breasts. She saw this once when she and Jessie entered a sex shop not-so-accidentally and Jessie laughed and laughed telling Tifa she would be a natural at that. She’s only done it twice though, both with Cloud, and he wasn’t very fond of it, found it extremely obscene, but with Reno… well, she shouldn’t compare the two, should she?

Reno’s eyes grow wide as plates when she tightly traps his cock in between her breasts and drags them up and down, licking the tip every time it emerges before her.

‘Holy fucking shit,’ Reno grunts between his teeth.

He watches her like that, holding her face with both hands, but soon after she starts he grabs her under the arms and launches her back onto her back. Tifa freezes, all her confidence cracking despite Reno ravaging her body with his mouth again. He notices her rigidness and looks up though.

‘What’s the matter?’ he pants, his frown concerned.

‘I thought you might like that,’ she murmurs, so low she almost doesn’t hear herself. ‘Sorry.’

Reno laughs, loud and leaning his head on her chest.

‘Sorry?’ he repeats, cackling. He looks up at her and his eyes shine with merriment. ‘I’m just gon’ cum embarrassingly fast if you keep that up, and I wanna fuck you again too bad to let you finish.’

Tifa actually exhales in relief and they both end up laughing even as they keep kissing and touching desperately.

Reno sits up and gathers her on his lap, arms tightly wound around her so that they are pressed as close as possible while they keep devouring each other’s mouths. He reaches down for another condom barely separating from her, and even so he presses her again close when he comes back up, ripping again the packet with his teeth and spitting the tear aside. Tifa feels tempted to speak up, wants to speak up, but again shyness makes her click her mouth shut after she opens it. Reno notices. He seems to notice everything she does.

‘Don’t hold back, kitten,’ he says, kissing her neck. ‘I told you: tell me what you want and I’ll make it happen.’

He takes a bite of her collarbone and she gasps. Tifa finds no reason to hush. He wants her to go all in, and she wants to go all in, so she internally curses her timidity and lets the sensation of his tongue against her skin ride her once more.

‘I like it from behind,’ she whispers.

Reno looks up at her biting on a grin.

‘Then on all fours, gorgeous.’

Tifa hops off of his lap and sits on her side to watch as he puts on the new condom, and then, even as she gets on her hands and knees Reno grabs her hips to position her. He takes a bite of the flesh of her ass and she yelps and laughs, and he laughs, too. He smacks her ass, but she likes that too. Tifa wonders how is it even possible for her to be so into everything he’s doing to her.

His thrust into her pussy in this new position brings her to new heights of pleasure. Reno is relentless in his assault and Tifa can only grip the bedsheets and whimper, but soon her body moves on its own and starts meeting him halfway, slamming onto him. Reno growls like an animal, fingers digging into her hips.

‘That’s right, Teef,’ he grunts. ‘Ride me however the fuck you want.’

She’s bursting at the seams again, her muscles sore from the tension of the sensations, feeling him slam into her innermost threshold over and over, the wet sound of their bodies slapping against each other obscene and yet maddening. When the wave hits her again her arms fail her and she cries with her face on the bedsheets as she squirts her load, but Reno doesn’t stop, he keeps going much to her shock. It hurts her sore pussy a little, but the pleasure overpowers that; it just feels too good to stop, doesn’t want him to stop.

Reno grabs her then around the waist and pulls her up, moving them so she can lean against the wall, and keeps thrusting into her holding her as tight and as close as he can to him. Holding her steadily against him with one arm wound around her, he drives his other hand to her clit and rubs her, too, so that pleasure ravages her every nerve ending until she’s screaming again, tears streaming down her face. Only then Reno finally stutters in his climax, grunting onto her shoulder and holding her so tight it hurts.

Her whole body fails her. She’s shaking too much, her muscles are too sore, but when she thinks she’s going to fall Reno holds her around the waist with both arms and, much more gently than up until now, lies them both down on the bed. Tifa trembles and spams there, trying to recover her breathing and perhaps failing, because she doesn’t know who she is nor where or how she got here. She only knows that everything goes dark, and she could care less as long as she’s in such a deep state of bliss.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's short and sweet.

She reemerges from the deepest, most placid slumber to glowing, orange light. Tifa’s body trembles, her every muscle burns, and she takes a long moment to understand why her pussy is so sore. As her brain comes through the fog she realizes the weight on her waist, and she glances down to find an arm. Ah.

She smiles bashfully despite the none-at-all bashful acts from last night and turns carefully to find a certain redheaded Turk sound asleep. Tifa smiles, biting on a fingernail. Reno seems to be made to be in this lighting, pale skin and red hair almost glowing with it, and comes unbidden the thought that he looks beautiful. She feels tempted to stay, but that isn’t the deal of a one night stand, and she doesn’t think he would want that either. They both got what they wanted, and now it’s time to leave this behind. Tifa moves with the slightest of cares so as to not wake him up.

Tifa takes side and back alleys on her way home, shoes in her hand, to avoid attracting attention, and once in her little cottage she heads straight for the shower. She’s sticky all over, but all she can do is giggle and giggle at the fact, and when she slumps onto her bed she still can’t erase the smile from her face. She could start her day now, early morning as it is, but she’s in no hurry, the joys of retirement, and she feels too good and giddy to just ignore it. So, since she hasn’t slept much tonight, she falls asleep again with the joy of a woman well fucked for the very first time in her life.

When she wakes up again sometime around noon, still sore all over, but at least better rested, Tifa decides that her fantastic mood should be spent at the seaside. She gets ready quickly, simply putting on a bikini, a long wrap around her waist, and tossing a few essentials into her beach bag, but when she enters the bathroom to brush her hair she ends up laughing again: she’s glowing. Great sex looks damn good on her.

Tifa spends a peaceful day at the beach, taking baths in the sea, strolling, lying down bathed in highly protective sun lotion, and she gets to reflect on last night without interruptions.

If anybody had told her ten years ago, even less, that she would be aroused by Reno of the Turks, Tifa would have punched them in the throat. If they had told her she would get down and dirty with him and love every second of it and want more, she would have directly murdered them. And yet here she is, smiling stupidly to herself as she stares out at sea. She pokes and prods at last night’s events, tries to study them, tries to figure out what happened, how Reno took control of her so easy and so quickly, but she can’t find out an answer. Does she want one, even?

He knew what to do, when to do it. He knew how to touch her. And, even further, he was mindful: he picked up almost instantly every time she hesitated, doubted, lost her confidence, and tended to that at once. Even lost in that fire as they were, Reno didn’t lose his way and was able to pick her up and encourage her. He made her feel bold and daring and outrageously confident in a matter that Tifa has always been fairly average at, to her knowledge. Maybe it was his expertise, maybe it was his lust for her, but he brought something out of her that she didn’t know she possessed. Despite her awareness that something was always missing during sex for her, Tifa would have never imagined Reno would find that missing something and just give it to her. That he would bring her out of a shell she had no idea to have been hiding under. That he would unwittingly teach her such deeply intimate things about herself.

‘Tifa!’

She turns to the voice to find a petite blonde in a short, turquoise beach wrap that ties around her neck waving at her. Elena is accompanied by her fellow former Turks, because speak of the devil and he will come, and they are all dressed in appropriate light clothing, light linen pants and shirts, flip-flops and sandals in their hands to better walk on the sand. Reno, in usual Reno fashion, has his shirt unbuttoned, chest exposed, and Tifa ignores the unfurling of that thing in her belly. Instead she smiles and waves back as they approach her.

‘Hey, guys,’ Tifa greets, smiling.

‘It’s good to see you, Tifa,’ Rude says, nodding his greeting.

With the years it seems that Rude’s crush on her has subsided, but he still addresses her with polite reservation. Curious, she can’t help but wonder if he knows that his best friend was the one to actually get to her, wonders what he would have to say about it.

‘Reno mentioned he met you the other night,’ Tseng says. ‘Vincent did mention to me that you reside here now.’

‘Yep,’ she chirps. ‘Welcome to my new turf.’

‘You sure know how to pick them,’ Elena laughs.

‘Turns out I do,’ Tifa laughs. ‘You guys having a good time in New Mideel?’

‘You bet. I don’t think we’d had a proper vacation in—years, probably.’

‘I can’t even remember, to be honest,’ says Rude.

‘Well, then I’m glad you get to relax a little. New Mideel’s a great place for that,’ Tifa says.

‘And a great place for babes,’ Elena adds, winking—Tseng smacks her behind the head.

‘You know what?’ Tseng says. ‘Perhaps you could help us, actually. We’ve visited the tourist traps, but we’ve been meaning to actually see the town proper. I’m sure you’re busy to show us around, but perhaps you could give us some pointers about it?’

‘Not busy at all. The joys of retirement,’ she laughs. ‘I can give you a little tour if you want.’

‘That would be fantastic. Thank you, Tifa. We appreciate it,’ Rude says with a little bow of his head.

‘Sounds good, but not today,’ Elena scoffs. ‘I’m beat from the walk to that goddamn crater. Let’s leave the tour for tomorrow?’

‘I’m fairly tired, too,’ Tseng says, shrugging.

‘Tomorrow it is, then,’ Tifa says.

‘Do join us for dinner as thanks though. Our treat,’ Tseng offers. ‘The menu at the resort is excellent.’

‘Oh, that’s not necessary,’ she says, waving her hand dismissively, thoroughly ignoring Reno’s uncharacteristic silence as he absently glances out at sea through his sunglasses with a smirk on his face. ‘Plus, I’m sure you guys would rather spend some quiet time together out of work for once.’

‘Nonsense. We enjoy your company.’

‘Oh, I don’t know…’

‘Come on, Teef,’ Reno finally drawls, turning to look at her over the edge of his shades. ‘Don’t be such a prude. Let’s eat.’

Tifa pointedly ignores the memory of last night, ignores that he clearly is alluding to it, if the sharpness in his eyes is anything to go by.

‘Reno,’ Tseng chastises him, as per usual. Tifa giggles at the familiar scene. ‘Please, ignore him, Tifa. But do join us tonight.’

‘Reno’s old news, Tseng, but thank you,’ she grins, and smirks when Reno takes a hand to his heart, mock hurt. ‘Alright, I’ll come.’

‘You wound me, Lockhart.’

She just hums her amusement.

Later that evening she heads for the resort and joins the Turks in the outdoors area of the restaurant. They enjoy a really pleasant time, chatting and laughing about everything and nothing. Ever since their forces allied, Tifa has marveled at this bizarre union, but nevertheless enjoys getting to know them as people beyond their suits and Shinra’s orders. It is, after all, strange how people act under certain circumstances, and how life can change at any given moment.

Only two other tables, one of them clearly a bachelor party and another a sweet, young couple, remain occupied when Elena yawns for the third time in ten minutes. Tseng chuckles.

‘I think it’s time to call it a night.’

‘I’m so tired,’ Elena says, rubbing her eyes. ‘That freaking hole. You been there, Tifa?’

‘I try not to,’ she chuckles. ‘I don’t have such great memories of it.’

‘Right. Can’t blame you.’

‘At least you’ve made a nice life here though,’ comments Rude, shrugging.

‘That is true. I am loving it here.’

‘Shame about Seventh Heaven, however. We liked your old place.’

‘Hey, I deserve a break from rambunctious Turks,’ Tifa jokes.

‘As per usual, Reno ruins everything,’ Tseng says, entirely deadpan, as they all laugh.

Again, Reno takes a hand to his heart and gapes.

‘I resent that. What ‘bout all the fun you had tellin’ me off?’

‘I wouldn’t call it fun, but alright,’ Tifa laughs.

‘I think I’m going to turn in, as well,’ Rude says.

‘What?’ Reno snaps, grimacing his dismay. ‘No way, yo.’

Rude just shrugs.

‘You ain’t goin’ anywhere,’ Reno says, aiming a finger at Tifa. ‘I’m on vacation, I deserve to be out late and get drunk with a pretty lady. You owe me that.’

‘Or we could walk you home,’ Rude offers even as Tifa laughs, ‘instead of leaving you to deal with the unruly Turk, Tifa. It would be no trouble.’

‘I’ve had my fair share of rowdy patrons,’ Tifa says. ‘Reno’s an amateur. Don’t worry about me. I’ll have a last one with him for the sake of his vacation and tuck him in up in his bed before he throws up in a hot spring.’

‘Are you certain?’ Rude insists, looking at her meaningfully, because they both know Reno can be a handful when drunk.

‘Only one drink,’ Tifa promises, then looks at Reno. ‘And he’s going to behave super well, isn’t he?’

‘I’m always well behaved, yo,’ Reno says, smug, leaning back with his hands behind his neck.

‘Like that time you kicked a stool across the room in Seventh Heaven?’ Elena recalls, chuckling.

‘I do not remember that, so it never happened.’

‘I distinctly remember you coming over the following day to pay for the damages,’ Tifa giggles.

‘That never happened either.’

Tifa and Rude both roll their eyes.

‘Be good,’ Rude admonishes Reno as he, Tseng, and Elena stand from their seats.

‘You’ve such low opinion of me, yo,’ Reno says, puckering his lips at his best friend.

‘And walk Tifa home afterwards.’

‘I can walk her up to my room, if that works for ya.’

Tseng smacks him behind the head and Elena barks a laugh. The group bids one another goodnight and Tseng, Elena, and Rude walk away. Tifa stirs what’s left of her drink, a little nervous now that she’s going to be alone with Reno again, but Reno seems relaxed as he follows his friends’ retreating backs with his eyes. The moment they step out of the restaurant, however, his gaze falls upon her, sharp as a knife, but Tifa feigns ignorance. He leans forward, leaning on his arms on the table.

‘Alone at last.’

She looks up at him, a little surprised.

‘You were hoping for this?’

‘You can bet that glorious ass of yours I was. Hold that thought.’

Reno gets up and heads for the bar, where he orders, she surmises, another round of drinks for them. She looks back at her drink when he looks at her, trying, and probably failing, not to smile, and even so Tifa feels his eyes intent on her while he waits for their order. There it is again, that excitement, that burn, growing in her lower belly and coursing through her, slower than last night, and yet inexorable and equally powerful.

He doesn’t take back his seat when he returns, opposite to her in between where Rude and Tseng sat. Reno sits her cocktail before her and takes seat on Elena’s chair at Tifa’s right, sideways so he can continue to watch her, one arm on the table, hand close to her, the other holding loosely his drink over the back rest of his chair.

‘You pulled a walk of shame on me this morning,’ he says, laughter in his voice. ‘I’d have never expected that from one ever proper Tifa Lockhart, yo.’

Tifa shrugs, looking at him innocently over the edge of her glass as she takes a sip of her strawberry-flavored cocktail. Reno smirks.

‘We could’ve gone another round if you’d stayed.’

‘You don’t seem the type who wants their one-night-stands to sleep in,’ Tifa comments.

‘This ain’t gon’ be a one night stand, kitten. Givin’ you fair warning.’ His trademark mischievous smirk remains on his expression, but his sharp eyes are earnest on her. A flutter in her belly runs wild. He wants her, and Tifa will happily oblige. ‘After last night, why’d you think I wouldn’t want to catch you alone again?’ he asks, direct and to the point.

Tifa turns to face him as well and hold his gaze. She wants him, badly, too, but she wants to know upon which ground she stands as well.

‘Considering how often you’ve hit on me in the past, I always figured you saw me as a challenge. You got what you wanted last night, so you must have shaken me out of your system, right?’

‘Never saw you as a challenge, figured you’d never look my way twice, but I ain’t gon’ lie, had you given me an inch of an opening any time in all these years, I’d have gone for the kill, yo. Turns out maybe it wasn’t such a great idea though, the goin’ for the kill.’

Tifa tilts her head, frown curious and a little concerned.

‘Why not?’

‘Been thinkin’ ‘bout you all day, Teef, and damn if I wanted to stop.’

She shudders. Despite desperately wanting to have his hands all over her again, Tifa must tread carefully now. They both want to sleep with each other again. They both have been thinking about the other all day. They both want each other. This is just sex, but with such a powerful pull, with such incredible chemistry, Tifa must remind herself that even if they go at it again, this is a temporary pastime. The moment the Turks’ vacation is over this won’t happen again.

Tifa reaches out and takes his hand. She takes her time caressing it with her fingertips, following the pattern of his tendons and bones, following the movement of her fingers with her eyes. Up this close, she catches sight of his skin standing on end upon her contact and she smiles a little to herself.

‘It’s just the vacation talking, you see,’ she says. ‘It happens all the time to foreigners.’

‘Oh?’ he says, chuckling. ‘So you regularly go ‘bout breakin’ poor little tourists’ hearts? You’re evil, kitten.’

Her smile turns amused.

‘Not like I’m gonna break your heart, Reno. If you have one to break, that is. As I say, it’s the vacation. Once you’re back in Edge, you’ll stop thinking about me, I promise.’

He takes a hand to his chest and winces, and Tifa giggles, but he examines her anyway, some kind of calculation scheming clearly beyond his cunning blue irises.

‘You’re probably right,’ he says. ‘But meanwhile, I’m still on vacation, and I’m gon’ take as much as you’re willin’ to give.’

‘Good.’

Tifa leans in and kisses him, and Reno takes no time to reach out with the hand she was caressing and hold her by the back of her neck, keeping her in place for him to devour her. Arousal flares again all through her anatomy, and Tifa welcomes it without question this time.

Soon they all but forget their drinks and stand up to leave the restaurant. Reno keeps a hand on her waist all the way, and in the elevator he doesn’t jump her like last night, but Tifa doesn’t care that he simply stands before her, pulls a lock of hair back from her face, takes his time kissing her thoroughly. The urgency is there, palpitating through her whole being, but soothed by the knowledge that every wish of her flesh is going to be fulfilled once more in a matter of moments. She can be patient. All good things to those who wait, after all.


	4. Chapter 4

Tifa has barely slept, but she still stands with a bright smile on her face at the doors of the resort, waiting for the Turks to show up. She left again at dawn while Reno slept, and all she has managed is to shower and sleep a couple of hours. She’s still sore all over, still tired with the best kind of tiredness, but incredible sex makes her glow, so she’s happy to let that carry her all through the day.

It was as good as the previous night, if not better thanks to the comfort that they have passed the awkward first moments and her rising confidence. Reno was still dedicated to giving her four, five orgasms—she doesn’t know, she lost count, but at least this time she didn’t pass out. He still gave her the same intent attention, the same level of devotion. Tifa more than willingly let him lead her, confident in the knowledge that if she said to stop, he would, but still she was crazed for his touch, craved him in ways she had never desired anybody before. Not even Cloud, and that scares her a little, although not enough to stop fantasizing about last night while she waits.

When they make their appearance she greets them like she hasn’t left this very same place only a couple of hours ago. Reno shoots her a look, smirking, silently accusing her of walking out on him again, but otherwise he acts normal.

They spend the morning strolling through the town, Tifa directing them around the prettiest and most interesting places, showing them her favorite things about the town and teaching them curiosities of New Mideel. The Turks appreciate this, are honestly interested, and they ask her questions here and there, Tseng taking pictures of every little thing for Rufus. She takes them for lunch to one of her favorite places, but she’s careful to never even hint at where she lives, still protective of her sanctuary despite the newly acquired intimacy with Reno. Neither Reno nor Tifa give any of this away either. He still picks on her for sport like a child, although now Tifa finally sees it for what it always was, a little boy pulling from the pigtails of the little girl he likes, but anyway Tifa picks on him right back, and their usual banter is playful and irritating in equal parts, is comfortably familiar. If anybody notices that Reno stands a lot closer to Tifa than usual, however, nobody notices or cares enough to comment.

After lunch they head for the beach. They spend some leisure time bathing at sea and sunbathing on the sand, and Tifa loves to see how Reno’s eyes roam her bikini-clad figure every two minutes. His attention on her doesn’t blaze until later, however. Tseng and Rude go for what must be the quietest stroll along the shore, and Elena has found herself a real cute admirer that she’s busy chatting up. Tifa and Reno stayed playing in the water like children for a while, perhaps simply an excuse to touch each other without discovering their secret, but the moment things start to get out of hand, getting closer and closer with each silly push and splash, Tifa heads back for the sand to lie on her towel. Reno follows shortly anyway.

‘You keep walking out on me, kitten,’ he says as he slumps down on his own towel next to hers. ‘No fair. The bed’s real cold when I wake up.’

‘I don’t want you to get too used to my company,’ Tifa says, shrugging innocently. ‘So you won’t miss me when you’re back in Edge. I’m doing it for you own sake, you see.’

Reno hums and leans on his elbow to study her. Tifa chuckles and closes her eyes to the sun. She lets the sound of crushing waves and seagulls quaking swallow her, the murmur of beach-goers so usual Tifa barely notices it anymore. As a vacation spot that remains sunny and fair-weathered a great part of the year, tourists are common year-round with the exception of monsoon season in the latter weeks of summer and early fall, and even then some uninformed fool arrives in New Mideel hoping for sun. As a lively town, regardless, New Mideel’s residents do not neglect the entertainment the terrain offers and the seaside is a regular outing, so at any point her acquaintances and neighbors are around. It’s a true community in a way Midgar and Edge never were, neighbors actually there for their neighbors, and Tifa loves that she can meet up with just about anyone fortuitously on the street and have a good time and have others merrily join.

The contact makes her eyes snap open. Reno brushes his fingers across her neck, a shiver of a touch, and travel down. His fingertips leave a burning trail across her flesh, that stands on end as response, as if wanting to meet him halfway.

‘Reno,’ she calls, alarmed, but without making any move to stop him. ‘People will see.’

‘Nobody’s lookin’,’ he says.

‘At the risk of sounding vain, I know I attract an eye or two, and these are my neighbors.’

She looks at him when his fingers reach her clavicle, draw the shape of her bones. Somehow, she knows she shouldn’t be surprised that, even though his attention is on her, his eyes dart about on occasion, checking for potential voyeurs.

‘Coast is clear, kitten. Don’t worry.’

His fingers trace the valley of her breasts, but thankfully he doesn’t linger there or she would truly be in trouble.

‘How come you started calling me kitten?’ she asks, perhaps attempting to distract herself, even though the muscles of her abdomen convulse under his touch as it cruises that area next.

‘The sounds you make,’ he says, sighing. ‘All those little whimpers and sighs, they’re like a purr. Maddening, kitten. But I’ll stop calling you that if you don’t like it.’

‘I do like it,’ she confesses, exhaling a shaky breath.

‘Good. You coming over tonight, yo?’

‘Do you want me to come over tonight?’

‘Don’t ask stupid questions, Tifa,’ Reno huffs. ‘I told ya I’m gon’ take as much as you’re willin’ to give.’

Tifa giggles, and Reno, too, snickers. She tenses up when his fingers reach her pelvis, toy with the edge of her bikini bottoms.

‘Reno, Elena’s right there,’ she says, alarmed, but still feeling herself growing wetter.

‘She ain’t paying attention, trust me,’ Reno says, his eyes darting up towards his fellow Turk, standing hardly twenty meters away with her back to them. ‘I know her. She’s busy gettin’ herself tail.’

‘Somebody’s bound to see, Reno. What if Tseng and Rude return now?’

She wants to kiss him desperately, wants him deep inside of her again, but she stays still, trying not to draw attention. Reno scans the area yet again with his eyes, and somehow Tifa knows he will respect her privacy and stop if the possibility of being discovered raises. He leans in then, steals a deep, wet, horrendously brief kiss from her lips before pulling back apart.

‘I could suck you dry right now and nobody would see, Teef,’ he says, voice low and full of promise.

And then his fingers slither into her bikini bottoms and press against her clit, rub her deliriously right. Tifa’s whole body tenses up, and she pulls her legs towards her to shield the view from the front, but then she’s lost in his touch. Her eyelids flutter closed as the ebb of pleasure begins its course through her body and soon she’s panting.

‘Can’t leave you hanging like this, can I?’ Reno murmurs, leaning in again quickly to take a bite of the flesh of her bust before separating. ‘Not when it’s my fault that you’re so wet. What kind of man would I be if I didn’t fix that for ya, Tifa?’

She has to take a hand to her mouth to muffle a whimper and the other to hold his wrist and anchor him right there. Her toes curl with the delirium of his touch already.

‘I just can’t keep my hands off of ya anymore, Tifa,’ he growls. ‘I never thought I’d get to touch you, so now that I’ve got the chance I’m gon’ lick every inch of your skin, and I ain’t gon’ stop until you’re screaming.’

‘Reno—’ she whimpers, her back already arching.

‘Shit.’

His hand slips past hers out of her bottoms and Tifa’s eyes snap open, the bottom of her belly an empty coil, her whole body on the verge of a cliff without falling.

‘So sorry, kitten,’ Reno says, pecking her cheek. ‘So sorry.’

‘What the hell?’ she wonders, still shaking with the desperate need for release.

‘I promise I’ll make it up to you tonight,’ he says. ‘So sorry, Tifa.’

The murmur of voices nears, and past Reno’s shoulder she catches sight of Rude and Tseng slow approaching. She glowers at Reno.

‘I can’t believe you.’

‘I’ll make it up to you,’ Reno says, smile amused, but voice firm. ‘I promise.’

‘I’m so pissed at you right now,’ she grunts between her teeth.

‘Can’t blame ya,’ he snickers.

‘I’m going for another bath,’ she says, just for something to do that will at least calm her down. ‘If you follow me, I’ll kick you in the nuts.’

‘I won’t follow,’ he laughs.

Tifa gets up grunting to herself and drags her shaky, over-stimulated body to the sea, Reno’s eyes following her all the way.

Later that night, after taking the Turks to another one of her gigs for dinner, the party finally separates, but Tifa doesn’t go home. Instead, she heads for a stroll along the beach. She feels tempted not to return to Reno’s hotel room, leave him hanging just like he did her on the beach, but he has promised to make it up to her. When Reno texts her that the coast is clear, thus, she strolls her way to the resort.

He makes it up to her. Several times.

* * *

The following day she doesn’t meet the Turks. They spend the day in the hot springs, and, although they invite Tifa over, she actually lives here and has errands to do and people to meet and a house and a little garden to tend to. She does meet, however, the one Turk that night as it has become their routine, or as long a routine of a few days can be.

It’s awe-inspiring, Tifa thinks, that every single time she and Reno join through their flesh it doesn’t cease to be surprising and maddening and absolutely mind-blowing. That their craving for the other doesn’t subdue. That the need to touch and kiss and feel the other won’t submit to mental admonishments. But it must be the novelty, she muses while they lie sweaty and panting sideways across his bed. It must be that they are Tifa the ex-Avalanche freedom fighter and barmaid and Reno the former Turk. It must be the pull built through years on enmity, and then through years of playful banter and Reno’s innuendos. It must be the vacation. It must be the temporary of it. The fact that they have a week to sin, to purge all of their carnal desires, and no more. It must be one of those things. She finds that thought only marginally comforting.

Lying on her side, she watches, mesmerized, the rise and fall of his chest as he recovers his breathing.

‘When did you guys say you leave?’

She knows the answer. She only wants to remind herself.

‘Day after tomorrow,’ Reno says. He opens his eyes, stares up at the ceiling. ‘One last night,’ he adds, echoing her thoughts.

Tifa swallows, tries not to wonder what will be of her sex life after this, how will she lower the bar Reno has set for other men. He turns and leans on his elbow, breathing almost back to normal. He reaches out and brushes her hair back, lets his fingers tangle in its length, follows the movement with his eyes.

‘Will that be enough?’

She doesn’t know if he’s asking her or himself. He keeps staring after her hair, his gaze lost in thought. Tifa wouldn’t have answered either way. It won’t be enough. Not now that Reno has all but taken her every notion regarding sex and thrown it out the window. Not now that a brand new world of carnal bliss has opened before her, but which path she doesn’t want to take without him.

‘I gotta ask, kitten,’ he says, eyes back to hers. ‘How’s spiky in bed?’

‘I’m not gonna tell you that, Reno,’ Tifa says, chuckling.

‘I’m just curious, yo. I ain’t gon’ say anything to him, I promise.’

‘Why would you want to know something like that? You want me to stroke your ego?’

‘I don’t need my ego stroked, Tifa,’ he says, smirking. ‘I know what I’m doin’. I’m a connoisseur of the female orgasm.’

‘Curious honor,’ she smirks, just to pick on him, and ignore that she’s only one in a parade of women in his bed.

‘I mean it, Teef. I can tell when a woman’s properly fucked by her man, and when a man ain’t fucking his woman right. And you, you hadn’t been fucked properly.’

It’s true, and it stings a little, and yet she is loath to admit it. Loath to admit that she was in love and in a committed relationship with the man she loved for years and not once her needs were truly quenched, either emotional or physical. That in all those years she never really knew the depth of her carnal wishes because they were never explored; he wasn’t interested, she didn’t dare, afraid of driving him away further when it was hard enough to keep him close already. That even afterwards all those men she shared nothing but sex with never had a clue about how to satisfy her.

‘He’s different,’ she finally says. ‘He’s…’

‘Vanilla.’

‘I was gonna say “traditional”.’

‘Same dog, different collar.’

She rolls her eyes, shaking her head, but smiles in amusement. Reno watches her with his eyes narrowed for long enough that Tifa feels curious about his thoughts.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. I just can’t conceive it, yo.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘How didn’t he lose his mind over you?’ he answers. ‘How could he have one of the most stunning women he ever saw right there, ready and eager and fucking naked, and not take the chance to fuck your brains out every goddamn day?’

Tifa turns to lie on her back and close her eyes to the ceiling simply to not look at him. Reno being Reno, he probably isn’t unaware of the intent behind the movement or the reasons for it, but Tifa chooses to ignore that.

‘By losing his mind over someone else.’

It still hurts, a brief pang of pain that echoes against the walls of her ribcage, dull thanks to the pass of time, but still resonant. Resonant enough to vibrate inside the current emptiness of her own heart.

‘The Ancient,’ he says. His voice is low, respectful, or at least as respectful as he can be.

‘Aerith.’

Even uttering her name aches. Aches for the void of her loss. Aches for all the things that weren’t. Aches for the friendship they deserved and never got the chance to share. Aches for what it did to Cloud, because when she died, a part of him did, too, and he can never be retrieved from that, Tifa has accepted. But she says it aloud, regardless, because she doesn’t forget all the pain the Turks and Shinra caused, and she won’t allow him to forget it either, to forget that the Turks kidnapped her, that it was Shinra’s fault that she died at Sephiroth’s blade. Her hands aren’t clean, not with her Avalanche past weighting on her, but Tifa doesn’t forget that following Shinra’s orders Reno had her friends killed, dropped the Sector Seven plate over thousands of innocents. She doesn’t know whether he regrets this, is too afraid to ask, but it doesn’t matter either way. They may be different now, both of them, but she won’t allow him to forget who they used to be.

‘Even after?’ he asks, still low. ‘It’s been ten years, yo.’

‘You don’t choose that kind of thing, Reno,’ Tifa says. ‘It happens, and it takes hold of you, and if it’s the true deal, you can’t shake it off no matter how hard you try.’

‘Is that why you were with Cloud for so long?’

‘No. I loved him, and it was real, but not true. I guess we just took too long to accept that his true love was for someone else, and that I never felt it in the first place. Or at least I took too long to accept that.’

‘Do you still love him?’

She’s glad to have her eyes closed. Despite being fully aware that she shouldn’t give such intimate information to a highly intelligent profiler that used to be her enemy many moons ago, they have built a warm, comforting cocoon in his hotel room and she can’t help but feel safe, even if it may be an illusion crafted by his manipulative hands.

‘No. But it still hurts sometimes.’

‘How can that be?’

‘Have you ever been in love, Reno?’ she asks, chuckling. She knows the answer.

‘Don’t think so, no,’ he says.

If she was looking, she’d probably see him shrugging, unaffected by this.

‘Where does Mr Fire-in-the-Hole fit in all this then?’ Reno asks. Tifa snorts.

‘I don’t know. I didn’t see that coming, to be honest, but it was…’ She rubs her face. That was the nail in her coffin. ‘Yeah…’

After a beat of silence the mattress moves. His mouth on her neck sends a shiver down her spine. He moves to her lips next, and kisses her like he means to forget something. She knows, because she kisses him the same way.

‘Stay ‘til morning?’ he murmurs into her mouth. ‘We’ll have a spectacular round of lazy morning sex.’

‘We’ll see,’ she whispers, chuckling.

She doesn’t stay, just in case this takes a hold of her.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a dash of plot in here because Tifa deserves it.

The last night is different. They engage in the same high-intensity, absolutely maddening, desperate sex, a properly epic farewell, but something has changed. Tifa can feel it crawling on her skin. She can feel it in their conversations and jokes in between rounds, and during them, too. They talk more, murmured words as close to each other as possible, as if trying to keep the world from hearing, sometimes directly spoken into the other’s mouth. Their stupid jokes have them fluttering against each other’s body, the pulsating rumble of laughter bringing them even closer. They don’t talk from wherever they happen to fall after orgasm; they crawl to each other, as if they were dying and that was the only path to salvation. They are not satisfied until they are in the other’s arms.

She doesn’t fall asleep afterwards. Tifa lies in his bed, simply resting, with Reno’s arms around her from behind, his breathing on her shoulder. She allows herself to indulge in his touch just for a bit longer. Soon it will dawn, and she will leave, and so will he in a matter of hours. The delirium is over, and the sharpness of its finality keeps her awake, alert, like something is about to fall upon her.

Nothing happens, however, and before getting up Tifa turns around with the greatest of cares. Reno lies in peace, his expression relaxed, his stance unguarded. No smirk, no analytical eyes, no tension on his shoulders. She never noticed just how alert and ready for combat he constantly is until she saw him like this for the first time, but she also never considered that his body would be covered in scars just like hers until she saw it, bumpy, white scar tissue drawing a map along his anatomy, some of it paler, other redder and more recent, a lifetime of combat carved on his skin. She never could have known either about the freckles that splatter his body, across his nose and on his shoulders and arms, but she would have never seen them either had his skin not been exposed to the intense Mideel sun and Tifa up close and personal with it. She wonders what he has found out about her body.

She feels tempted to touch him, to trace his cheekbones and the tattoos on them, the sharp line of his jaw, the pattern of muscle on his arms, the white scar tissue over his skin, but she refrains. She has indulged enough, so instead she gets up, slow and carefully so as to not wake him, and goes in search of her scattered clothes.

Tifa halts at the door to dedicate him one last look over her shoulder. The profound intimacy they have shared these days added to the vacation high she’s suffering despite being a local resident cause something to pang inside her chest, but Tifa blames its trigger on her own neediness crating an illusion of something that never existed. It is the story of her life, after all. Chuckling to herself, she finally closes the door and doesn’t look back again.

* * *

  
Life goes on.

Tifa decides at last about what to do with her life now. Her daily routines are never dull, the magic of New Mideel and its inhabitants, so she’s rarely bored, more so now that she has gotten to know herself better ever since she left Edge two years ago, a process that reached its peak on that delirious week with Reno. She has got her retirement pension, so she doesn’t really need to work. But she has been holding back everything she is long enough. She might not want blood on her knuckles and death at her feet anymore, but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a lot to offer to the world, a legacy to pass on.

She polls her neighbors and acquaintances in search for potential to open a little dojo. A great deal of her emotional growth esteemed from a kindly, lovely old man who inspired her with his wisdom, so honoring Master Zangan by continuing his teachings seems as good a path as any to her at this point in her life. She owes it to him. She owes it to herself. Tifa discovers that while it isn’t the most popular idea her neighbors have ever heard, many react positively. As a family friendly town, children abound in New Mideel and parents find a dojo an interesting after-school activity that could help their children develop a sense of discipline and keep them entertained, and amongst adults there’s a variety of opinions, really, but Tifa likes to see many women open to the idea, and her new friends of both sexes love the idea, more so since many are in the military. Thus she decides to start planning.

The project soon becomes dear to her heart. Having managed a bar, Tifa is familiar with the process of running a business, so she knows how to prepare for it. Even a small project like this requires a great deal of thought after all. Searching for premises is her first step, since she can divert a portion of her pension to rent. Smaller groups would benefit better from her teachings, so she selects a small place, a little boutique that closed its business a few months ago. All she requires is a space that will allow for freedom of movement, a room that will serve as a locker room, and a restroom, and the place offers all: the shop proper for the lessons, a sizable storage room that she can divide to set up two small locker rooms, as well as a restroom. She sets to work on it.

Preparing the premises is a nice change of pace. Actually focusing on painting the walls and fixing the flooring and trying to not get sprayed by the faucet in the restroom seems to restart her, to breathe new life into her. She has found a purpose again, and this time it belongs to her alone, is hers to do as she pleases with it. It’s a strange change, considering she has spent her life living for others instead of for herself.

But this new journey affects her more on an emotional level. Tifa hasn’t started scheming lesson plans, but the work ahead makes her think often of Master Zangan and his teachings, and so when she trains, this time not simply to be ready for an apocalypse, but to refresh all her knowledge, her mind remains on her master. It travels back to Nibelheim. To blistered knuckles and scrapped knees. To sweat and panting breaths as she lied on the grass with Zangan looking down at her, urging her in that grouchy voice of his to continue. To peaceful, silent lunches sitting together against the rocks of Mount Nibel. She wonders what kind of teacher she will be.

Tifa doesn’t have to question this for long though. On the second week of her planning process she tells Priscilla about the project and the girl’s eyes widen.

‘Are you kidding?’

‘Why would I?’ Tifa asks, grimacing in amusement.

‘I’d no idea you taught!’

‘I’ve never done it before.’

‘Teach me,’ Priscilla says, leaning with her elbows on the bar, hands joined in prayer. ‘Make me your disciple. I’ll pay.’

‘What?’ Tifa says, eyes widening. ‘Really?’

‘I can’t pay much though, but being able to kick ass like you would be awesome,’ says Priscilla, starry-eyed. ‘Pretty please? With cherries on top?’

The girl’s plea stuns her to silence, but soon a smile spreads across her face.

‘Are you sure?’ she asks, playfully. ‘If I’m anything like my mentor, there will be blood and bruises. Often.’

Priscilla scoffs, rolling her eyes.

‘I always leave the bar covered in bruises and cuts anyway. I don’t even know how I get them. Actually getting them with a purpose should be a nice change of pace.’

Tifa laughs.

‘Alright,’ she says, poking her nose. ‘Then I declare you my very first pupil. And I won’t charge you anything, because you will be kind of my guinea pig.’

‘I can take that,’ Priscilla grins.

And so to her little dojo project joins actually becoming a pupil’s mentor. Tifa meets with Priscilla the very next morning on the cove beyond the natural rock jetty, a mostly secluded area of the beach. She only has a few vague thoughts about how to teach her, but at least the basics are the same for everything and everyone, so she knows what to teach her.

Three hours later Tifa finds herself complete. Yes, this is what she was meant to do. She’s helping this girl stay fit. Helping her become physically independent. Helping her realize her full potential, surpass the limits of her self-confidence. Helping her grow and mature. And meanwhile she’s creating a bond that even after that very first session Tifa knows will become so strong nothing will be able to break it. This is what she wants. What she was born to do. Afterwards, arms around each other, the two leave the cove sweating and laughing, and Tifa treats Priscilla to ice-cream to secretly celebrate her own discovery.

* * *

  
After three months of constant work Tifa’s little dojo is almost ready to open. The last coat of paint is drying, the restroom works without leaks, the locker rooms are small, but tidy and well equipped, and the dojo itself is spacious and minimalist, new mats covering the floor, ready to be broken onto. She calls it Final Heaven. The moment she decides on the name, somehow Tifa feels complete for the first time in her life.

Priscilla helps out a lot. Not only that, but she proves to be a quick study. She still has much to learn and live through, but in these three months she progresses enormously. Parallel to this growth goes Tifa’s relationship with the young girl. They become all but inseparable and seeing them together around New Mideel becomes as common a sight as that of Yeul and her adoptive brother Noel. Tifa sees Priscilla as a younger sister, and as such her protectiveness and affection for the girl takes seat gladly in her heart, marking her as one of her dearest people alongside her friends, both old and new. Priscilla comes to trust her like an older sister, and as such she confesses to Tifa her secrets and tells her about her dreams and aspirations, displays her admiration for Tifa like glaring sunlight before anybody who cares to see.

She knows nothing else of Reno, but neither does she try to learn of him. Tifa makes him that, a delirium to be sealed within the confines of her memory. Ever since she has chatted up a couple of men at the nightclub, has let them take her to their hotel rooms, and they are good, do a fair job in bed, but still pale in comparison to Reno’s skills. She doesn’t think of that though, makes of that remembrance a rarity that never sees daylight. Tifa only unravels his memory in the privacy of her bedroom, in the secrecy of deep night, and only when her otherwise welcome, beloved solitude becomes a little difficult to bear. Only then she lets the hallucination return to her mind. Only then she lets the fever dream override her senses and ignite her body. Otherwise she guards the memory of him zealously, her darkest, yet most precious secret.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Slight lemons ahead.

‘So you had to chase her all the way to Wutai,’ Priscilla laughs. ‘How could you not notice her stealing literally all of your Materia?’

‘Hey, she’s a ninja.’

‘You say she was sixteen! She was a brat!’

‘Still a ninja, and probably deceived us by actually being a brat, knowing Yuffie,’ Tifa giggles.

Priscilla didn’t have shift at the bar today, so they have met for training at their spot on the cove, although they have spent a great deal of the time talking. They have gone on long enough that dusk falls as they return home, the coastal breeze chilling the warm weather, but Tifa has grown uneasy ever since they left the beach. She can catch the movement from the corner of her eye, the shadow lurking in the darkness in between houses, in side alleys, where the last golden rays of dusk can no longer reach.

The memory of black smoke and leather, of slanted pupils on Mako green eyes sets her on edge, muscles tensing at the thought.

But she stays calm. She doesn’t want to scare Priscilla, and she needs to be on guard and serene if she wants to protect her, not fail her like she failed Marlene that day in the church.

‘I’m starving,’ Priscilla says when they finally reach her doorstep. ‘I could eat that giant-ass octopus that beached last month.’

‘Yummy,’ Tifa laughs.

‘See you tomorrow?’

‘Sure. I’ll stop by Sunny Side Up. Good night, Priscilla.’

‘Sleep tight, Tifa.’

They kiss each other’s cheek and, once the girl’s door closes, Tifa storms ahead. She follows the pattern of the trick in the light that has been chasing them and enters the next alley. She doesn’t fear despite the darkness, despite the wilderness that runs rampant all over the town and plays with the shadows. Tifa scans the alley with her eyes, but nothing moves. It doesn’t matter. She knows it’s here.

‘If you wanna fight, come out and fight, coward.’

Nothing. Tifa steps deeper into the alley tightening her fists, invites her pursuer to attack her.

She catches the shadow from the corner of her eye, moving behind her, and her whole body screams in alarm. Tifa turns fast and aims a fist, but the shadow dodges at incredible speed. It doesn’t deter her. She kicks and punches, and the shadow parries and retaliates. She parries his hits, discovering that he carries a metallic weapon when she blocks it with her forearm, but at last she finds an opening and she lands her fist on her opponent’s kidney, then her elbow on his face. The shadow falls back with an “Oomph”, slumps onto the ground. He chuckles. Tifa frowns, tightening her fists.

‘Good to see retirement ain’t dullin’ your reflexes, kitten.’

Tifa gasps. Her eyes widen. Her heart stops and her breath catches in her throat. But she waits, mistrusting, as the shadow picks himself up and steps forward. A single ray of light glares upon him like a scar, glowers against flaming red hair and sharp blue eyes and those stupid marks atop his cheekbones, that nightmarish stun baton glinting menacingly in his hand. Something flips wildly in her gut and her whole body comes alive.

She meets him halfway in a hungry kiss, and as she holds his face with her hands, one of his comes to cradle the back of her neck while the other circles her waist. They cling with despair to the other, two people dying of thirst finally finding an oasis. She only allows separation when she feels asphyxia nearing, but regardless she throws her arms around his neck, presses herself close enough that no air can move between them, gasps in his panting breaths against her lips. He’s warm and solid and here, and a coldness she hadn’t realized she felt seeps out of her bones when he wraps both arms around her waist.

‘Heh,’ Reno murmurs into her mouth. ‘Missed me?’

Tifa rolls her eyes. Infuriating as always. She opens her mouth to shoot him a scathing quip, but as her eyes drink of him she realizes what he’s wearing: leather jacket and fingerless gloves, form-fitting t-shirt, cargo pants destined to field work, dirty, black combat boots. His jacket’s linings are turquoise, declaring him a Second Class HOLI Officer—she had forgotten she outranks him.

‘Is everything alright?’ she asks, concerned by his military attire.

‘Yep. Nothin’ to worry about.’

‘Are you sure?’

He chuckles and lifts a hand to hold her cheek. His eyes, too, drink of her, darting all over her features.

‘Just your scheduled recon assignment to that Mako swimming pool you cool kids got back there. Did my rounds with the local Peacekeepers. All clear, so I thought I could stop by and pay a visit to a good ol’ friend.’

Tifa smiles and holds his hand firmly to lead him away. Reno doesn’t question her, just holds her hand right back.

‘So, three months,’ Reno asks. ‘Whatcha been up to?’

‘I’ve been working on a little something,’ she says.

She wonders how much he wants to talk. True that the last night things changed, but it doesn’t mean the change prevails. He’s here for sex, she knows that, doesn’t kid herself, and she wants him to ravage her, but she also wants to check what their new ground is now.

‘Yeah? What’s that?’

‘I’m opening my own business.’

‘Ambitious kitten,’ he says, grinning. ‘What’s it gon’ be? Another bar?’

‘A dojo. I’m going to teach martial arts. Mostly to children, but I’ve got two adult groups ready to start, too,’ Tifa answers smiling.

He seems to consider her words for a moment, looking up ahead and puckering his lips. His opinion doesn’t affect her, but she is curious about it. As Reno thinks, he lets go of her hand. The gesture leaves her cold and tense, wondering if she’s misread the situation, but his arm comes up around her neck and she breathes again, leaning into him.  
‘Tifa Lockhart teaching ankle-biters how to fist-fight,’ he says then, laughter in his voice, and Tifa laughs, too. ‘I can see that.’

‘I felt it was a good next step, passing on the legacy, you know?’

‘Will that make you happy?’ Reno asks.

Her eyebrows arch in surprise as she looks at him, and, even more surprisingly, he meets her eyes with honesty in them.

‘I think it will. I even have a pupil now, a girl in town, and teaching her makes me feel great.’

‘That’s all that matters, then.’

‘What if killing men was what made me happy?’ she jokes.

‘I’d get me some popcorn and kick back. Always liked watchin’ you fight.’

Tifa laughs, and Reno squeezes her a little, smiling in amusement, too.

‘What about you?’ Tifa asks. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Same ol’, same ol’. Jumping ‘bout the place, tracking and kicking Remnants in the nuts. Gritting on my boss’s nerves. Nothin’ you ain’t familiar with.’

‘Poor Vincent,’ she teases, sighing. ‘Having to put up with an unruly Turk like you, I feel for him.’

‘That’s why I’m here, to give the guy a breather.’

They continue joking as they walk, but Tifa hesitates when they finally reach her little cottage. Reno picks up on this, of course, and lets go of her when Tifa stops before her front steps.

‘So,’ he says. ‘This is the part where you give me a peck on the cheek and wish me goodnight?’

Tifa sighs and climbs up a step, turning to face him, only to be at his eye level. She holds his face again, letting her thumbs trace the marks on his cheekbones. Hands in his pockets now, Reno doesn’t speak or move, simply waits meeting her eyes, studying her as usual.

‘I don’t bring my flings here,’ she murmurs. ‘When I want to get laid I pick up a stranger in the nightclub and we stay in the hotel, but I’ve never brought here a man who wasn’t my friend simply for sex.’

‘Your sanctuary, huh?’ he says.

‘Yes,’ Tifa confesses. ‘Very necessary to me.’

‘I ain’t comin’ in if you don’t want me to, Tifa. We can go to the hotel. We can stroll ‘round town all night. Beach sex ain’t my favorite, sand in all kinds of nasty places, but we can do that, too. Or you can peck me on the cheek and say goodnight. Contrary to popular belief, I’m real respectful.’

‘I know. I’m inviting you in, but I need you to understand that, and I need you to respect it.’

Reno mulls it over, still staring into her eyes, and nods.

‘Do you still want to come in?’ she asks.

Tifa knows she doesn’t need to voice her real question: if he still wants to come in, even knowing that crossing her threshold means crossing a line they won’t get back from. This may still be a fling, nothing but sex between two kind-of-friends, but him coming into her sanctuary promotes the fling to something else, even though she doesn’t know what to call it yet. All she knows is that by allowing him within her sanctuary she’s granting him a new power, and it should scare her more than it does.

‘Yes.’

That’s all she needs.

They stumble into her place. Reno presses her against the chest of drawers without pulling away from her, blindly kicking the front door closed, and Tifa is already shaking with anticipation, her skin feverish, that heatwave pooling in her gut and unfurling and spreading through each and every one of her nerve endings. He holds her hips and turns her around, presses his hardening erection against her ass and Tifa can only sigh. She reaches back to get him closer, as close as humanly possible, but Reno takes both her hands and presses them against the wall, holds her wrists with one of his hands there.

‘See, kitten, I’m really fucking upset,’ Reno grunts into her ear, then licks her neck as his free hand slips right into her sports shorts.

‘Why?’ she asks, shuddering, already delirious from his touch.

His hand continues its journey and soon his fingers rub on her sweet, sweet spot, evoking a whimper out of her throat.

‘Three months,’ he says. ‘Three fucking months, Tifa.’

‘Heh,’ she says, smiling playfully back at him, mimicking him. ‘Missed me?’

His chuckle reverberates against her back and she shudders again.

‘I missed ya, alright. Turns out I can’t shake you outta my head.’

Reno nibbles her neck and she gasps, the sensation joining his rubbing already too much. She’s soaked wet and feverish already.

‘Turns out your sweat’s the only one I wanna lick. Your pussy the only one I wanna taste. Your mouth the only one I wanna ravish. Nothing else does, kitten, and it’s really fucking unfair.’

‘If you think I’m gonna believe you haven’t been with other people all this time…’ Tifa says, giggling.

‘Didn’t say I hadn’t. I’m sayin’ it don’t work anymore, no matter how good they are, how pretty, how dirty, how smart. Not even imagining it’s you I’m ramming into does the trick anymore. Fuck all, nobody feels like you, Tifa, and it’s drivin’ me fucking crazy.’

Her skin stands on end, even more aroused at his confession, and at once she knows to pay him back in kind.

‘I’ve been thinking about you, too,’ she whispers, confesses her own secret. ‘Put your face to strangers. Touched myself imagining it’s you deep inside of me again.’

‘That so, kitten?’ he asks, his voice so husky it seems more animal than human.

‘Yes. So, please, touch me. Make me feel how real you are this time.’

‘Oh, if you ask so nicely…’

He releases his hold on her wrists, but Tifa keeps them still; if he wants them there, then there they will stay. She whimpers at the loss of his fingers rubbing her so deliciously, but grows even more aroused at once when he pulls from her shorts and panties down roughly, even wetter hearing the clinking of his belt buckle undoing. She turns only slightly to watch him pull out his cock and can’t help but jut out her ass towards him, offer herself to him.

The delirium returns. The fever dream she has secretly, silently obsessed over for three months. Tifa scratches the wall as he thrusts hard into her, fills her up completely. Reno undoes her, shatters her into millions of pieces and puts her back together one by one. She had been trying to convince herself that she just wanted someone to do her like Reno did, to touch her like Reno did, but no—his touch can’t compare to anybody else’s. The way she ignites and blazes under his hands hasn’t met a match and Tifa doubts it will ever do so. She loses herself in him and loves every second of it, doesn’t want to reemerge.

They don’t even make it past the entrance for the first two rounds, and afterwards they only manage to stumble towards her bedroom, ripping clothes off as they go, unable to keep their hands off of each other, their mouths off of each other. The whole world ceases to exist and becomes him. Becomes his woody scent. The shape of his muscles under her hands. His ivory skin and his now barely visible freckles. His sharp blue eyes boring into hers, submerging into hers, into her deepest desires. The world ceases to exist, and Tifa blissfully falls into the oblivion of his presence.

Several hours later Tifa reluctantly resurfaces, enveloped in warmth and comfortably weighted by exhaustion. Reno’s breathing caresses her shoulder, his arm acting as an anchor around her waist, and she blinks groggily, sighing her contentedness.

‘How long are you staying?’ she whispers.

Reno inhales deeply and withdraws his arm. She looks over her shoulder to see him rubbing his eyes. He was falling asleep.

‘I’ll be gone before you wake up.’

A pang echoes in her chest.

‘So soon?’

Even as she utters the words Tifa knows she’s slipped. She takes her fingers to her lips, muscles tensing up all over. Reno’s arm circles her waist again and pulls her body towards his. He nuzzles the back of her neck.

‘I might’ve told good ol’ Vinny a little lie to overextend my assignment here,’ he murmurs. ‘He’ll skin me alive if he finds out I’m using WRO resources to fuck.’

Tifa giggles despite his wording. She ignores the warmth spreading through her chest, the flutter in her belly. Ignores that he has lied just so he could come see her.

‘Why am I not surprised that you have zero qualms about lying to your boss?’

‘Don’t know why you should be surprised,’ he says, snorting a laugh. ‘I’m still a Turk at heart.’

She turns around giggling. Reno smiles with mischief at her. Tifa pulls a lock of fiery hair back from his face, lets her fingers trace the tattoo on his cheek, his cheekbone, the sharp line of his jaw.

‘Wake me up before you go. I’ll make breakfast.’

‘I ain’t gon’ wake you up.’

‘Why not?’

‘‘Cause I’m a big boy. I can show myself out.’

‘That’s not the point,’ Tifa insists. ‘Let me at least make you a cup of coffee. Don’t fly all the way back to Edge without at least a strong dose of caffeine. Because I guess you’ll be piloting, won’t you?’

‘Have I ever let anybody else pilot my chopper? I’ll be fine.’

‘But—’

His mouth on hers stops her words.

‘Don’t try to shut me up,’ Tifa says, although she then pecks his lips again.

‘Not tryin’ to shut you up, just tryin’ to get you not to worry.’

‘Reno, it’s a long journey…’

‘That’s why I need some shuteye,’ he says, smiling devilishly. ‘Nighty-night, kitten.’

He winks and closes his eyes, stretching to accommodate himself, and Tifa rolls her eyes, but continues to smile in amusement. In response she shifts even closer to him, buries herself under his chin, against his chest, and sighs.

‘At least make yourself some coffee before you go,’ she murmurs to his chest. ‘Or I’ll worry sick about you all day.’

The rumble of his low laughter resonates against and within her.

The bed is cold in the morning. After patting it blindly and wrinkling her nose in displeasure, Tifa opens her eyes to find herself alone, no trace of Reno but the twisted bedsheets. Unsurprising, but still disappointing. But she decides that it still is what it was back in the summer: a fling, a moment of madness, powerful in its intensity, but fleeting and meaningless anyway.

Thus Tifa stretches and moves on. She gets up and throws on her long robe, tying the knot before her as she heads for the open kitchen, humming contentedly to herself. She proceeds with the humdrum of breakfast: a fruit salad with local produce, good old toast with butter and honey, a nice, strong coffee with a splash of sweet cream. When she goes to insert the capsule into her coffee machine, however, she finds an already used one inside. Tifa frowns, curious, but shrugs, figuring she must have forgotten it there. She changes the capsules and turns to pick up a cup from the cupboard, but the ceramic near the sink catches her eye. Her little groceries pad is sitting upright against it, a message scrawled on it in long, drawling handwriting, a dreg of cold coffee in the cup’s bottom.

_“Thanks for the coffee.”_

Tifa smiles.


	7. Chapter 7

It starts like that.

A week later Tifa finally opens Final Heaven and starts her very first lesson with a small group of eight-year-olds. She soon finds, regardless of how much she has read on the matter these past few months and how much advice she has gotten from Serah, that instructing children is not remotely like training adults, feels more like herding cats away from empty boxes half of the time, but Tifa manages just fine despite her initial nervousness and the first session is a success. She has after all wide experience with children, even though this is the first time she actually teaches them. She used to prepare lesson plans for training recruits at the WRO, but her military curriculum, after all, mostly circled around getting down and dirty.

She has fun with the children, but her first session with adults proves to be even more entertaining. Tifa has always been great with children, so her reciprocal affinity with them during the session doesn’t surprise her, but adults are a different matter entirely and yet she finds with delight that the first group, only composed of four people, give their everything and focus. They even joke around and share some laughs together, and afterwards they remain chatting outside of her premises for almost an hour long. Her second adult group, however, is by far her favorite. She has labeled it the advanced class because when Fang, Lightning, Noel, and Laguna expressed their interest in her lessons, Tifa knew she couldn’t put soldiers in the same class as civilians. With them she can go a little harder, really rough them up, and she loves that they play back, that they are honestly interested, that they even display admiration for her skills, and since they are all friends, the comfort of familiarity provides fantastic fun.

Three weeks later mouth-to-mouth runs its course and slowly, but surely gains her a few more clients. Children are loving her lessons, but her greatest satisfaction is born from the first time a mother thanks Tifa for her efforts, as her highly active son actually seems calmer and sleeps better.

‘Great job, everyone,’ Tifa tells her six-year-olds. ‘You really deserve some nice, long stretches, so on your mark, get set, relax!’

Among titters her pupils let themselves drop on the mats. Tifa giggles, too, but then continues with her usual soothing tone to guide them through some post-workout stretches. As she strolls around them, humming instructions and correcting postures, Tifa catches from the corner of her eye a flaming red something. Her heart skips a beat and, upon lifting her eyes, her breath catches in her throat.

Reno stands there, leaning against the wall with his hands in his pockets, a little ways apart from the mothers and fathers watching their children exercise. He wears civilian clothes this time; leather jacket, shirt, torn jeans, dirty combat boots. He half smiles and winks at her. Tifa has to remind herself she’s in the middle of a lesson to continue with it.

She doesn’t hurry bidding both children and parents goodbye afterwards. Tifa believes in good PR, and being in good terms with these people is part of that, which is a nice addition to the fact that she likes most of her clients. It doesn’t escape her notice that some mothers and fathers look at the foreign redhead that stays behind inside the premises while Tifa kindly ushers them all out. The gossip won’t make itself wait, but right now, with Reno here only three weeks after his last visit, she doesn’t care much.  
Tifa finally manages to shoo the last of the parents, a divorced dad who just had his daughter start martial arts this very same week and who has taken to trying to chat her up at every opportunity, and locks the door. She turns around, leaning her back against the door, and smiles upon finding that he isn’t a mirage or a delusion.

‘Heya, kitten,’ he says, his smile widening.

‘I did not expect you to come back so soon,’ Tifa says.

‘That a good or a bad thing for me?’

She huffs a laugh. Neither steps forward. Tifa realizes they are both taunting the terrain. The first time it was a vacation-fueled sex marathon. The second time he happened to be around. What is it this time?

Tifa finds that right now she doesn’t care. They both know he’s here for sex, and she would be a big, fat liar if she said she has stopped craving his touch. She should question his lack of work gear or his repeated visits or the way he’s not quite simply smirking this time, but instead she steps forward and kisses him.

His hands come around her and press her close as her arms wind around his neck. He kisses her with as much enthusiasm as she does, sighs into her mouth, and Tifa somehow feels that a strain she didn’t know she held melts away from her.

‘Was that a good or a bad thing for you?’ she teases him.

‘Best thing, yo,’ Reno says, grinning.

‘How come you’re here?’ Tifa asks. ‘You’re not wearing your uniform this time.’

Reno shrugs his shoulders and looks aside, pressing the smile with his lips. Tifa understands, nothing short of shocked, that this proficient profiler, this expert manipulator, this high ranking assassin actually is capable of feeling shyness and hesitance.

‘Got the day off tomorrow,’ he drawls. ‘And since I finished at a decent hour today, I thought I could do with some sun.’

‘The sun is always a good idea,’ Tifa says, smiling, and kisses him again.

‘Thought so,’ Reno says, and this time he does smile, apparently encouraged by her response. ‘But, woe is me, got myself a problem, yo.’

‘Oh, no,’ she says, continuing his playful tone. ‘And what is that problem?’

‘Left so hastily for the sun I forgot to find myself a place to spend the night. What ever am I gon’ do?’

‘Well, you’re in luck. I happen to know a place where you could stay, if you liked.’

‘My hero.’

‘There’s only one tiny problem though,’ Tifa says, giggling. ‘My fridge is literally empty, so until I go grocery shopping tomorrow I was gonna go to this place I took you guys on vacation for dinner. And I really need to stop for a bite, I’m starving.’

Reno brings up a hand and looks upwards in thought.

‘Grub, sun,’ he says, enumerating with his fingers; ‘a babe, stupidly awesome sex, and a roof over my head. Sounds ‘bout right, yo.’

Tifa grins and pecks him on the lips.

‘I just need a bit to close up shop. Hang on.’

After her lessons, which take place three days a week at the moment, Tifa sweeps and mops the floor and tidies up, as well as puts away her administrative documents, locking into a safe her clients’ personal information and cash. Today that can wait though. Since she won’t be teaching tomorrow as per her schedule, she simply tidies up and locks everything securely in the safe. She can clean up when Reno leaves. Reno, however, helps her finish up, and soon Tifa is locking the front door.

So far nobody in town has seen Tifa in closer-than-platonic company of any male, but they do today. They may not hold hands or kiss in public, but she doesn’t presume their physical closeness doesn’t give anything away. In the bar she’s greeted here and there, and the other patrons interest themselves in her company. Lightning and Hope, who often meet for lunch here since it’s halfway in between their very demanding jobs, ask, too, and Tifa dares introduce Reno to them since they are friends. To everyone else, however, Tifa simply replies that Reno is an old friend who has come to visit and chooses to ignore the looks people steal from them as they have dinner sitting in a booth, talking about everything and nothing comfortably. She knows her neighbors aren’t malicious, just curious. This is a town after all, and Tifa has made her bed, really, by claiming spinsterhood since her arrival and now presenting herself with a mysterious and hot redhead with whom she has no problem stealing food off of each other’s plates.

They barely sleep. Even in between rounds of intensely toe-curling sex they don’t do more than take a catnap or two, but otherwise they stay awake. They talk in murmurs in bed before they grow hungry. They wrap themselves in her bedsheets and try to scramble up a semblance of a snack with what little Tifa has in her pantry. She laughs and laughs upon discovering that not only Reno can improvise a meal, but he can do it with shocking skill, and she laughs even harder when she learns that Reno actually enjoys cooking and is fairly good at it, an image Tifa could have never conjured on her own had she not witnessed it. Then they have sex again on the kitchen counter. They move with their improvised snack to the couch, where they tell each other anecdotes until they engage again in physical activities. This time it’s Reno the one who laughs when Tifa loses her footing and falls off of the couch with a yelp, but he comes down to kiss her hurtie and do her on the floor amongst both their giggles.

They wake up at almost noon. Reno teases her for her crazy bed hair, but Tifa just laughs because mornings really aren’t her hair’s best moment. Regardless, he washes her hair with her in a surprisingly non-sexual shower, where they spend a lot longer that Tifa usually does while they wash each other and talk about Tifa’s plans for today.

They head for the marketplace afterwards. The bustling commercial area of the town has no escape from the eyes following them as soon as they appear, but Tifa doesn’t care. She greets her acquaintances and neighbors as usual, and gives the same answer to everybody who asks about her company, that Reno is a visiting friend. Reno isn’t exempt from the inquiries, but he’s gracious in his answers, as well as zealously careful with his words as only a man of his skills can be, diverting attention effortlessly where he sees fit and never saying a word more than he means to no matter how much some people poke and prod.

Tifa had noticed in the past, during the few jobs they have worked together for the WRO, that Reno truly has a way with words. She has no doubts it came with the terrain of being a Turk, and the very second in command at that, but even with that he has always been a social butterfly, the life of every party. Yet Tifa sees him as an introvert. He can talk to anybody about anything, but never reveals much about himself, doesn’t ever talk about his feelings or his life. The only person who probably truly knows him is Rude, but their secret meetings are allowing Tifa to see further into his character. The way his voice softens when he tells her stories about his late mother when they lie together in bed. The way he speaks so close to her he might be kissing the words into her mouth. His voice a murmur instead of a holler like back in Seventh Heaven. His demeanor serene instead of raucous and alert. It brings her mind back to a few rare instances when Reno would arrive alone in Seventh Heaven late at night, always during last call, and slump down onto a stool at the bar and start talking the moment she served his drink. The place would empty out of patrons while he remained and she listened. Tifa always surmised he talked to let off steam about his latest assignment, because after all barkeepers everywhere are the sinner equivalent to priests in confessionals, but with all these new revelations in sight she wonders if Reno came those times simply for the sake of talking to her.

They joke around and smear themselves with condiments making lunch back at her place, and end up doing it on the kitchen counter again. Disheveled, but fully clothed, they eat lunch on her terrace and continue chatting for hours.

A horrendous beeping sound removes Tifa from a deep, sweet stupor. She always hated alarm clocks. She ignores it, however, until it stops and the warm something she was pressed against moves and allows cold to seep into her bones despite the mild warmth prevailing at sunset. She groggily opens her eyes to find Reno standing, tidying up their lunch process, and disappearing indoors. Tifa means to follow, but the outdoors couch she bought precisely for this purpose sucks her in until shade towers over her.

‘Heh. You really are a kitten, kitten.’

‘You betrayed the sanctity of my home, Turk,’ she says, sighing contentedly.

‘How?’

‘By disrupting a nap with an alarm clock.’

Reno snorts a laugh.

‘Had to, yo. If I don’t get back with enough time to catch my beauty sleep, I’ll be useless tomorrow, and Vinny don’t appreciate my lack of productivity.’

‘You are his greatest nightmare,’ Tifa says, giggling in amusement.

She sits up, stretching, muscles pulling all over, and rubbing her eyes, and finally focuses on him. Reno leans against the balcony, jacket on and ready to go. The sky glows orange behind him.

‘Night’s falling,’ she says.

‘I’ll be fine.’

‘Have a cup of coffee before you go,’ Tifa insists.

She knows her concern is stupid. Everybody knows of the assignment where Reno and Rude were supposed to run recon on southern Wutai on a threat of low level Remnants only to encounter a giant, winged monster and its spawn created by said Remnants, which happened to be not so low level. Reno flew them through the vicious swarm which threw itself at the chopper with killing intent while Rude shot the monsters down. The two of them destroyed half of the enemies before reinforcements arrived, and Reno managed to land the chopper successfully, safe and sound, save for some scratches. Even after watching the footage from the bodycams and the chopper’s cam, Tifa to this day is in awe at Reno’s piloting skills. She has never told this to Cid. He would kill her.

Reno chuckles. He comes to the couch, leans down with a hand on the backrest, and pecks her lips.

‘You’re such a worrywart, yo.’

‘At least send me a text when you land in Edge, Reno. Just to know you’re safe.’

Tifa is slipping again, but she doesn’t care. She should, should worry about her concern for him growing deeper, but can’t find it in herself to care.

‘You want me to text ya?’ Reno says, arching his eyebrows, smile amused.

‘Well, you aren’t gonna call, so yes.’

Reno narrows his eyes, examines her, but Tifa holds his gaze firmly. He leans in again, steals another peck from her lips.

‘Don’t worry so much, kitten,’ he says, turning around, climbing down the steps. ‘You’ll get premature wrinkles.’

‘Ass.’

He barks a laugh. Tifa stands up, smiling, and leans on the balcony to watch him leave. He doesn’t turn back, but she watches his retreating figure until it’s out of sight.

Five hours later her phone beeps with an incoming text message.


End file.
